How do you know if your loved one is eligible to receive hospice services? How does a physician make a prognosis of six months or less for a patient? Let’s take a look at the criteria that hospice and medical professionals utilize when determining whether a patient is appropriate for hospice services.
A life-limiting dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease will progress over time. Patients can live with this dementia for several years; many are even able to remain at home, cared for by family members or professional caregivers. However, as the disease progresses, these patients become increasingly disoriented and unable to care for themselves. Too, they become more confused and may become combative or develop certain problematic behaviors, such as wandering. Ultimately, most patients will become completely dependent and require care outside the home. It is only when they reach the final stages that they qualify for hospice services.
But what, exactly, are the “final stages?” To answer this question and help determine patient eligibility for the Medicare/Medicaid hospice benefit, a set of guidelines was developed by a team of pioneers in Alzheimer’s research—specifically, Dr. Barry Reisberg & Associates, from New York University Medical Center’s Aging and Dementia Research Center—who devised methods of determining how to diagnose dementia progression. These guidelines became known as the Functional Assessment Staging or FAST sca...Click here to read more from Gilbert Guide