What We Do
At Heritage Crossing, we provide all levels of palliative and hospice care.
What is hospice?
Hospice is not a place or an organization; it is a philosophy and a defining model for compassionate medical and comfort care. Hospice care is centered on a goal-focused plan of care for each individual patient in their last months of life and support for their families, friends and caregivers. Hospice care focuses on comfort, dignity and symptoms management, when cure is not possible, and provides physical, emotional and spiritual care based on the unique needs and preferences of each person.
When is the right time for hospice care?
Many families wish they had investigated hospice care earlier to benefit longer from emotional, medical, spiritual and care-giving assistance. The sooner hospice care is utilized the more support we can provide. Hospice care often improves quality of life thus prolonging life, if even only for a short while, in some instances. Hospice care is available to anyone who has prognosis of 6 months or less to live.
How does hospice help?
Our experienced care team works with physicians to provide comprehensive care:
- Symptom management
- Comfort Care
- On-Call 24/7 medical, emotional, and spiritual support
- Medical Equipment, supplies and medications related to the life-threatening diagnosis
- Emotional and spiritual support tailored to each patients’ and family’s needs and wishes
- Resources for assistance with financial, legal and other issues as well as caregiver support
- Trained volunteer assistance
What is palliative care?
Palliative care is right for all stages of a serious illness. That includes cancer, heart failure, dementia or major organ disease. Palliative care provided in the early stages of treatment can relieve pain and other symptoms. Other curative therapies help with:
- Relieving nausea, loss of weight, tiredness, anxiety, depression, and breathlessness
- Helping to make difficult medical decisions
- Ensuring as much comfort and physical activity as possible
- Coordinating care and treatment among doctors at all stages of illness
If you have just been diagnosed with a chronic or serious illness, you deserve the treatment that brings you peace of mind. If the illness gives you pain or difficult symptoms, or the quality of your life has been affected, Heritage Crossing, can provide compassionate care — in your home or in our care center — that relieves pain, eases unpleasant symptoms, and improves your quality of life.
Hospice Care
Although many hospice patients have cancer as their primary diagnosis, Heritage Crossing, cares for patients of every age, while they deal with potentially life-limiting illness, including COPD, congestive heart failure, emphysema, Alzheimer’s, and dementia to name just a few.
- Physician
- Nurse
- Certified Nursing Assistant
- Medical Social Worker
- Bereavement Coordinator
- Chaplain
- Volunteer
- Complementary Therapies Practitioner
When a family experiences the real-life support that hospice care provides they are often annoyed with themselves for leaving it so long before asking for our support. Accepting a place in a hospice is a commitment to live every single day and with the best quality of life possible. Our aim is to allow patients and families to feel more in control of what happens. Our highly professional and dedicated staff gives much-needed encouragement, assistance, and relief just when a compassionate guide can make the difference between hope and despair.
Additional Programs We Offer
Faithful Paws Animal Assisted Therapy
Provides a soothing presence and the therapeutic benefits of pet therapy.
Music Therapy
Music therapy affects vital functions that we think are beyond our control. These include heart rate, blood pressure, respirations and release of body’s natural pain killing chemicals. Even when we are no longer conscious or speaking, we can console and comfort with music. The use of music enhances our lives as a means of teaching, celebrating and expressing ourselves and has been for thousands of years.
Spiritual Support
We accept spiritual life as each person’s unique experience of a power beyond himself or herself, a sense of order in the universe, a sense of purpose in living, and a sense of connection with everything. Spiritually also includes the organizing set of beliefs, values and hopes, by which each person makes sense of frequently chaotic elements of life.