How to Find Palliative Care
If you or a loved one is living with a serious illness and struggling with pain, stress or other symptoms, a referral to a palliative care team can help provide relief and improve your quality of life. While a doctor referral is usually necessary, here’s a place to start: the Palliative Care Provider Directory on GetPalliativeCare.org. The Provider Directory is designed to help you find and locate palliative care in your area, quickly and easily.
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of your illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.
Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with your other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. Palliative care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.
The palliative care team will spend time talking and listening to you and your family. In addition to managing pain and other symptoms of your disease and treatment, the palliative care team will help you match your match your personal goals to your treatment options. They will also make sure that all your doctors are coordinated and know and understand what you want. This gives you more control over your care.
It’s important to know that most insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, cover all or part of palliative care. It’s the same as with other medical services like oncology or cardiology.
Because of the growth, availability of, and demand for palliative care services beyond the hospital, the Palliative Care Provider Directory lets you search for palliative care based on the setting where you need the care: Hospital, Home, Nursing Home and Office/Clinic.
GetPalliativeCare.Org is an online resource for patients and families. There is a quiz to help determine if palliative care is right for you; free webinars, articles, links to resources, and podcasts featuring patients, caregivers and palliative care experts. The site is provided by the Center to Advance Palliative Care.
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