Hospice Checklist

 When a hospice is committed to the original mission of hospice, its services can be a great relief for both a patient and family members.  Providing care to assist patients with a terminal illness to live their remaining days as peacefully as possible with pain minimized is a needed service.  Under its founder’s principles, hospice care should neither artificially extend life nor hasten death.

Unfortunately, some hospices and hospice organizations are actively promoting actions that hasten death including terminal sedation, withdrawal of nutrition and hydration, and “by delivering pain relief sufficient to cause death by incidentally suppressing breathing.”  Acceptance and facilitation of assisted suicide is also endorsed by some hospice organizations.  Hospice Foundation of America and National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization are among those hospice organizations that promote some or all of these means to hasten death.

Below is a series of questions that can help determine what type of care philosophy any given hospice may be following at any point in time.  Use this checklist as one means to help determine whether a hospice will truly provide the services desired.   Note that for all questions seeking primarily a “yes” or “no” answer, the preparers of this questionnaire consider “yes” to be the right answer.

 ___________________________________________

Will this hospice accept a patient who is fed through a feeding tube or IV?

Will this hospice continue feeding the patient with a feeding tube or IV?

Under what circumstances would a feeding tube or IV be removed?

Will this hospice establish a feeding tube or IV if necessary to provide nutrition and hydration to the patient?

Will this hospice continue to administer medications that are stabilizing a chronically ill patient, when the patient is not actively dying? 

Will this hospice treat patient infections with antibiotics?

Under what, if any, circumstances would terminal sedation be used?

Will this hospice reject any patient request for assisted suicide?

Will oxygen be provided if it is needed to keep the patient comfortable?

Will physical therapy be provided if it will help the patient’s condition to improve (e.g. after a stroke to recover use of limbs)?

If a patient refuses to accept a medication, will the patient’s decision be respected?

What levels of pain control will be used and what criteria will determine their use?

How frequently will patients needing pain control be monitored for its effectiveness?

How is the pain patch utilized, if at all, with patients?

Does this hospice titrate pain medications according to accepted standards?

What type of "comfort care" is this hospice using?

Will this hospice treat bedsores if the patient is not at the very end, active phase of dying?

Will this hospice accept a patient who is on dialysis?

Will this hospice continue performing dialysis on this patient?

Will this hospice provide client references that can be checked?

Do we have access to hospice staff 24x7 in case there is a problem controlling pain or some other distress condition arises?

Are there any circumstances where this hospice would demand the discharge of a patient?

Will this hospice decline to accept severely disabled patients who are not terminal?

Will this hospice decline to accept chronically ill patients who are not terminal? 

Developed and distributed by:
Illinois Right to Life Committee
65 E. Wacker Place, Chicago, IL 60601
312-422-9300   illinoisrighttolife@ameritech.net
www.illinoisrighttolife.org