November 4, 2023
Throughout the month of November, Village Hospice will be joining organizations across the nation in hosting community activities recognizing National Hospice and Palliative Care Month (HAPCM). This year’s HAPCM theme is “Courageous Conversations.”
For more than 40 years, hospice has helped provide interdisciplinary, supportive care to millions of people, allowing them to spend their final months wherever they call home and surrounded by their loved ones. Hospice teams craft plans of care that ensure pain management, therapies, and treatments all center on the patients’ and their loved ones’ goals and wishes. Hospice care also provides emotional support and advice to help family members become confident caregivers and adjust to the future with grief support for up to a year.
“National Hospice and Palliative Care Month provides an opportunity for patients, providers, and community members alike to engage in advance care planning and other important discussions about the care they wish to receive when facing a serious illness before the time of crisis,” said Ben Marcantonio, COO and interim CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). We believe everyone deserves a good death, and the way to get there is through courageous conversations.”
Each year, over one million Medicare beneficiaries receive care from hospices across the United States. When a patient is not eligible for hospice care, they may benefit from community-based palliative care, often offered by hospice providers. Palliative care is patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness also involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and facilitates patient autonomy through access to information and choice.
“I truly appreciate the assistance of the Interdisciplinary Team members who provided wonderful care to my mother and education and support to me while she was in the care of Village Hospice,” said a patient’s son.
More information about hospice, palliative care, and advance care planning is available from Village Hospice at www.jkv.org/health-services/hospice-care or 816-525-0986, or on NHPCO’s CaringInfo.org.
A service of John Knox Village, Village Hospice has been serving hospice patients in and around the Kansas City area for over 21 years.
John Knox Village is one of the largest single-site, not-for-profit life plan communities in the nation. Located in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, the Village provides high-quality housing, services, and amenities, as well as a full continuum of health care and ambulance services on its campus and in the surrounding community.
