Home palliative care

Through overall therapy and continuous assistance at the patients’ own homes, home palliative care is aimed at making disease easier to accept from both patients and their families. Our teams help patients and relatives cope with communication and relation needs, as well as familiar and interpersonal dynamics. The service is provided by palliative physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers, psychologists, health care workers, dieticians, speech therapists, spiritual assistants and volunteers who guarantee the assistance patients and their families need.

Home palliative care includes:

Medical, nursing and rehabilitation care, managed by our multidisciplinary teams in order to supervise disease’s symptoms and alleviate pain.;
Psychological assistance to patients and their families, to cope better with the disease and its course and accept the reality of death;
Social care, to help patients keep their daily routine and make easier social and home activities without affecting relatives’ work commitments, including hygiene and personal care, food preparation;
Spiritual assistance, to accompany patients on their path to a dignified death from a spiritual and emotional perspective;
Support in the grief, to help relatives after the death of a loved one.

How to request and access home palliative care services

Home palliative care services are free of charge, with no age and/or income requirements.

Home palliative care services can be proposed by:
• Family doctors (Medici di Medicina Generale – MMG),
• Paediatricians (Pediatri di Libera Scelta – PLS),
• Hospital wards (Reparti ospedalieri),
• Rehabilitation institutes,
• Relatives,
• Hospices.

The formal request to access the service must be prescribed by the Family doctor (Medico di Medicina Generale – MMG) or Paediatrician (Pediatra di Libera Scelta – PLS) and then submitted to the local Health District (Distretto Sanitario).

For more information:

Authorization and service activation

Once the request has been received, the Multidisciplinary Assessment Unit of the competent Local Health Authority (Azienda Sanitaria Provinciale) examines the requirements and releases the authorisation, which is sent to the association chosen by the patient or his/her family through the prescribed form.

The service is activated within 24 hours from the notification.

The service

Once the service has started, our staff contact the patient’s family to schedule the first home visit conducted by the doctor and the nurse, and to define the therapeutic plan together with the family doctor or the paediatrician. The patient is assisted by the local multidisciplinary team, which is coordinated by our operation centre. In addition to the service provided at the patient’s home, the palliative care team meets weekly in the presence of our Responsible Physician and Supervising Psychologist, to evaluate and analyse the conditions of patients in charge and the quality of the assistance provided, elaborating individual treatments.

Suspension or interruption of the service

The suspension or interruption of the service can be decided by the Multidisciplinary Assessment Unit, as a result of specific evaluation. The patient may decide to interrupt the service at any time.