Patients and families are a vital part of the decision-making process. Hospice works to help patients maintain control of their lives whenever possible, enabling people with a terminal illness to make decisions about how and where they want to spend the rest of their lives.

Hospice offers palliative care rather than curative treatment, using sophisticated methods of pain and symptom control that allow the patient to live as fully and as comfortably as possible.

Hospice emphasizes quality, rather than the length of life. Hospice helps the patient to make the most of each hour and each day of remaining life by providing comfort and relief from pain and suffering.

Hospice cares for the person, not the disease, focusing on the care, not a cure. The hospice movement stresses human values that go beyond the physical needs of the patient. Physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual issues are addressed. We affirm life and regard dying as a normal process.

Hospice provides on-call availability, 24 hours a day, allowing the patient and family to reach the nurse at any time, night or day, seven days a week.

Hospice provides continuing contact and support for family and friends for a year following the death of a loved one.