Services are usually available for families or significant others even after the patient dies. These usually consist of group or individual grief counseling. It may take a referral from a physician to get someone enrolled in a hospice. The rules for enrollment can be different from one hospice to another. Some programs may offer pre-hospice counseling to people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Services provided by hospices vary.
Most do not provide invasive or extreme measures like surgery, respirators, dialysis, chemotherapy, or radiation. Because of this, some people think that hospice patients no longer get medical care. That is not true. Hospice patients can get medications for pain and symptom control. Many insurance plans now cover hospice services.