Palliative Care at Home

A long-term illness, such as diabetes or COPD or congestive heart failure, doesn't just affect your health. It affects every aspect of your life. MultiCare Palliative Care services provides additional care for you during your treatment, partnering with you and your family to make medical decisions and treatment choices, and offering support at all stages of illness and injury.

What is Palliative Care at Home?

Palliative care focuses on pain management and other comfort therapies to help improve the quality of life for patients who are still under treatment for a life-limiting illness. Palliative care can be received by patients at any time, at any stage of illness.

Palliative care and hospice care have many similarities, and both share the goal of providing comfort and improving quality of life. However, hospice care is only available for those facing a life-threatening illness who choose to stop any life-prolonging treatment.

How We Help

Our palliative care services are provided to you on an outpatient basis, wherever you live — a private residence, adult home, retirement home or assisted living facility (Inpatient palliative care services are available through MultiCare Palliative Medicine). Services we provide include:

• Comfort therapies including massage, reiki, music, pet and aromatherapy
• Emotional and spiritual support
• Medical equipment, supplies and medications
• Pain and symptom management
• Physical, occupational and speech therapy

Who Can Receive Palliative Care Services?

To be eligible for Palliative Care services, Medicare, Medicaid and many other private insurance companies require that:

• You have a life-limiting condition, such as cancer, cardiac, respiratory or neurological disease, kidney failure or dementia
• You still wish to seek curative treatment
• You have a need for skilled care — such as physical therapy
• In-home care is medically and reasonably necessary
• The Palliative Care you need is intermittent, not continuous*
• You are homebound
• You are under the care of a doctor

* Note: While our Palliative Care services do not provide constant, round-the-clock care, we can help you access that level of care if that is your need.