Blog

If you or a loved one is facing a life-limiting illness, VITAS Healthcare can help. We focus on you, not your disease, to ensure comfort and dignity near the end of life. VITAS provides you and your family with a team of hospice professionals—physician, nurse, hospice aide, social worker, chaplain, volunteer—to meet physical, emotional and spiritual needs. We care for you wherever you call home—a private residence, assisted living community or nursing home. If symptoms become severe, we have Intensive Comfort Care, shifts of 24-hour continuous care until symptoms are under control. For those symptoms that cannot be managed at home, VITAS also provides inpatient hospice beds and units in local hospitals. With VITAS you’re never alone. We’re available 24/7/365, with support available even on holidays and weekends. In the transition from hospital to home, from curative to palliative care, from chronic to end-stage disease, VITAS is with you every step of the way.

At VITAS, we do all we can to keep hospice patients home, comfortable and independent. Because patients in transition should not have to wait, VITAS maintains its own home medical equipment (HME), delivery and staff. Your HME technician is part of your hospice team and understands patient and family’s needs. HME is specified as part of your plan of care and your technician is available to answer questions and make home service visits. Examples of medical equipment your care plan may call for: Oxygen equipment and accessories, including portable oxygen cylinders, oxygen conserving devices and high-flow oxygen, Nebulizer, Enteral feeding pumps and supplies, CPAP and BiPAP, Full electric hospital bed, Low-air-loss mattresses and other support surfaces, Wheelchair and other specialty chairs, Trapeze bar and patient lift, Suction pumps (respiratory and gastric), Walkers, canes and bedside commodes. VITAS delivers, maintains and picks up medical equipment at no cost to the patient or family.