Discharge Planners

Hospice and Discharge Planners-Working Together

Legacy Hospice wants to support you in your role as the discharge planner. Ways in which the Legacy Hospice team can assist you include:

• Communicating difficult information
• Facilitating family conferences
• Interceding with complicated family dynamic issues
• Assisting with difficult depositions
• Providing a fuller range of options available to discharge planners, patients, and families alike
• Identifying misconceptions by the family, which may be inhibiting their consent for a hospice visit. (These misconceptions include the view that patients generally die within days of a hospice admission when, if fact, many hospice patients live six months, a year, or even longer.)

Why Hospice?

As a discharge planner you may be asking yourself, "Why would I suggest hospice for my patient?" The answer is simple. You want to be sure that your patients and their families are receiving all of the benefits and support that they deserve. Legacy Hospice is the compassionate choice for the terminally ill, because of the extensive services that are provided. Benefits include:

• Communicating difficult information
• Expert relief of symptoms and physical pain
• Emotional and spiritual support of patients and families alike
• Significant financial relief
• The ability to stay at home
• Home visits-"House calls"
• Telephone support: offering expert advice and dispatching assistance when required
• Respite care, allowing the caregiver to rejuvenate
• Ongoing bereavement support for the family following the illness

Determining Hospice Appropriateness

The hospital Discharge planner plays a very important role in helping families connect to Hospice services. Often a physician writes orders sending the patient home with hospice. At times though, the discharge planner is the first to consider the need for hospice care. A patient should be evaluated for Hospice services if any of the following key indicators are present:

• The patient has been diagnosed with a terminal illness
• Frequent hospitalizations have occurred
• Pain is present
• The patient desires to stay in his own home
• Financial relief is needed
• The patient decides to forgo further treatment
• The patient has been told that further treatment is unavailable, or would be futile
• The patient has experienced frequent telephone calls, and/or visits to doctors' offices or emergency rooms

Preparing for a Legacy Hospice Referral

When referring your patient to Legacy Hospice, there is certain information that you will be asked to furnish. This information includes:

• Patient's name and demographic information-generally furnished on the face-sheet
• The terminal diagnosis
• Clinical information, such as the History and Physical (H & P) or the latest notes
• Insurance data
• Disposition (*note-for complex disposition issues, hospice social workers are available for consultation)
• Names and phone numbers of POA and/or caregivers
• Name of the physician

You may supply this information verbally over the phone, or for your convenience you may fax the information to Legacy Hospice. To ensure that a faxed referral receives prompt attention, please call
Legacy Hospice to give notice of the incoming fax.
Phone: 895-8686 | Fax: 895-8975