Medicare Hospice: What Is Covered With Medicare Hospice Care

First of all, you need to know that hospice care is a special type of care provided to people or patients with a disease that can never be cured. This particular care is non curative and it is implemented for people with terminal illness to improve the quality of their lives at the face of death.

As mentioned before, hospice care is not a treatment for the disease a patient has but it is a care that will ease their suffering and provided them with dignified death.

Medicare supports hospice care and is in fact part of the Medicare Hospital Insurance or under the Part A benefit.

In order to be eligible for hospice care, the patient must first be certified by a physician to be terminally ill and has a life expectance of six months or less.

Although patients receiving hospice care doesn’t receive treatment towards cure, they will be provided with close medical care and support. Medicare states that patients who are terminally ill will be able to receive both home care and inpatient care. If needed, some services and treatments that are not normally covered by Medicare can still be covered.

Here is what’s covered under Medicare hospice care:

• Services of physicians

• Nursing care

• Pain and symptom management drugs

• Medical supplies and equipments that is related to the illness

• Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology services

• Medical social services

• Home health aide and homemaker services

• Short-term acute inpatient care

• Counseling

These are the things that are covered under hospice care provided by Medicare. So, if you or someone you know has terminal illness and is covered by Medicare Part A, you might want claim this benefit as it will improve the quality of life even if death is inevitable.