Hospice & Palliative Care is a Covered Benefit for All Enrolled Veterans

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Palliative Care is an interdisciplinary team-oriented approach to expert pain and symptom management and emotional and spiritual support, tailored to individual needs and wishes. Palliative Care is aimed at enhancing comfort and quality of life for patients with serious, life-limiting and terminal illnesses.

Palliative care can be a complement to conventional, disease-modifying medical therapies or it can be an alternative when such treatments are no longer effective or not desired by the patient.

  World War II veteran Frank Danch at home with his Hospice social worker and nurse

Hospice, the most intensive form of palliative care, is provided to seriously ill patients who have less than six months to live and who have agreed to enroll in hospice services, rather than to pursue aggressive cures for their illness. Hospice focuses on comfort for both patients and loved ones, not cure. VA defines hospice and palliative care as a continuum of comfort-oriented and supportive services provided across settings, including hospital, extended care facility, outpatient clinic, and private residence.

Hospice and palliative care are covered services, authorized in VA's Medical Benefits Package, on an equal priority with any other medical service. VA medical centers (VAMCs)must provide or purchase hospice care when VA determines that an enrolled veteran needs it.

VAMCs must also provide palliative care services through consultation teams that include a physician, nurses, social worker, and chaplain. Palliative care teams offer consultation throughout a medical center, assisting with planning and guidance on managing a patient's pain and other symptoms, especially when these are complex or difficult to control.

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