Hospice care is a system designed to aid dying individuals and their families.
The focus of hospice care is to provide palliative and supportive medical care, which promotes comfort and control of pain and other disease symptoms. When an attending physician informs a person that they are terminally ill, patients and family members rely on that diagnosis to begin to accept the reality of the end of life. This reliance prompts deep consideration of hospice care as a viable alternative to ease the pain and suffering associated with terminal disease, and to help family members cope with the loss of a loved one. The role of the physician in making determinations of terminal illness and in clearly communicating this information to the patient is vitally important to the remaining course of a person's life. A recent case discussed the role of the medical director in hospice organizations based on an inadvertent admission of a patient to the hospice facility.