Palliative care focuses on easing pain and discomfort, reducing stress, and helping people have the highest quality of life possible. It is appropriate at any age and any stage of a serious illness, not just end-of-life. It is an ‘extra layer of support’—treating the symptoms of an illness and supporting the entire family.
What is palliative care and what are its goals?
Palliative care is specialized medical care that reduces physical discomfort, improves quality of life, and makes living with a serious illness easier. Palliative care supports the person with the illness as well as anyone who helps care for them. A benefit of palliative care is that it may help people with serious illness stay out of the emergency room or the hospital for treatment.
Palliative care offers the following benefits and services:
- Palliative care provides an extra layer of support. You can have a good quality of life while getting treatment for a serious illness. This means you can spend more time at home while still receiving the best medical care.
- Palliative care helps your doctors talk to each other; if you have ever received different messages from your doctors, palliative care can help.
- Palliative care is available to you at any stage of a serious illness – from diagnosis to later stages of disease. If you have any questions or are feeling overwhelmed, you can always ask for palliative care.
- Palliative care offers a team for all your concerns.
Both palliative care and hospice care are focused on the needs of the patient and their quality of life, but hospice is specifically focused on the period closest to death. Learn more about their differences.
Palliative Care: Concept and Practice
The philosophy of palliative care is to improve quality of life for both patients and their families, focusing on comfort, dignity, and respect throughout the course of illness. Under this broader definition, palliative care is applicable for any treatment situation, including primary care. Specialty palliative care offers an additional level of expertise required for certain cases and is often the type of care we think about when discussing serious illness.
Specialty palliative care is delivered through a team-based, holistic approach across various settings such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, and at home. It emphasizes symptom relief, communication, care coordination, and support for both the patient and their family, adapting as the patient’s needs change over time. The interdisciplinary team approach ensures that all aspects of a patient’s health—physical, emotional, social, and spiritual—are addressed comprehensively.
Who is palliative care for?
Palliative care is appropriate for anyone living with a serious illness, at any age or in any stage of disease as it is based on need, not prognosis. It is best to start palliative care as early as possible to benefit both the patient and their family.
Palliative care is also valuable for pediatric patients living with serious illness. As with adults, pediatric palliative care addresses serious medical conditions, including genetic disorders, cancer, prematurity, neurologic disorders, heart and lung conditions and others. It relieves the symptoms of these diseases, such as pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite and difficulty sleeping, anxiety and depression. In short, it helps the child and the family improve their quality of life.
Pediatric palliative care is family centered. It helps with communication and coordination of care. With the close communication that palliative care provides, families are better able to choose options that are in line with their values, beliefs, traditions, and culture. This improves the well-being of the entire family.
Who pays for palliative care?
Medicare, Medicaid, many insurers, and healthcare plans will cover the medical portions—physician and nurse services—of palliative care. However, the patient will be responsible for co-pays or co-insurance if that is part of their plan.
Veterans may be eligible for palliative care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Check with your doctor and healthcare plan to see what insurance will cover in your particular situation.
