Palliative care at home
Get personalized care in your home focused on your health goals, symptom management and help with stress you may be experiencing from a serious or advanced illness.
Care and support when you need it most
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with a serious illness. Palliative care is different from
In many cases, a dedicated care team will work closely with you to help you understand your care, medications and provide additional support. Your team will also communicate with your family, caregiver and healthcare providers to help provide medical, social and emotional support as long as necessary.
Think of it as an extension of your current care that may also include house calls from a team of clinicians available to you in the comfort of your home and the type of personalized, one-on-one care you may not typically receive in an office setting.
Watch Jennifer’s story to get a closer look at how personalized care in the home can make a difference for members and their loved ones.
My husband, he had a chronic illness,so he'd been this way for many years. And I think there's a point that you always know if, you know, it's that time. I dealt with two family members in different situations. But the one at the end, using the palliative care, was probably that "aha" moment for me. When you're going through a chronic illness or disease, and that person reaches that point and says, "I need more than what I'm getting," the best resource is palliative care.
Most people think about hospice care as there's no treatment, comfort only, those type things, but palliative care, you can still be going through treatments and getting all the care that you would normally want, but you have a palliative team that's gonna do a lot of education with you. They're gonna explain your illness, they're gonna see what your goals are. One of the first goals that was set for my spouse was, "I wanna be able to go outside a couple days a week and enjoy, you know, the outside and be able to breathe, and I want to be able to get on my 4-wheeler a couple times a month."
The thing that made me the most comfortable, excited about them coming is I needed a break sometimes...and that's just the honest truth. You feel this freeing sense because even though I needed to be involved, during the time that the clinician was here, checking on my loved ones, I could just walk away for a while, you know, and let them have a good discussion.
This was our talk place, so it has a lot of happy memories out here for me. Sometimes serious conversations happened too, but this is just where we shared, you know, what was going on with our day, with our life.
I think the advocacy that these healthcare providers provide is invaluable, of course, but the biggest thing they do is they are there for this patient. The biggest advice I could give to someone who needs this support in their home is: Pick up the phone. Say, "I really need to know more about your program."
Palliative care serves patients with serious illnesses such as cancer, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among other illnesses, whose disease has affected daily living and puts them at risk for emergency room visits and hospitalization. Each patient gets a personalized care team to support and manage their care and may provide services such as:
- In-home and virtual visits from a nurse practitioner, physician and social worker
- 24/7 telephone support
- Medication management
- Symptom management
- Coordination with other medical professionals
- Patient advocacy to ensure the patient’s care and treatment goals are being met
- Communication with family members and other caregivers
- Coordination of in-home care and support services
- Advance Care Planning with completion of advance directives
Palliative care at-home options available through Humana
Humana works with several palliative care providers to deliver home care services at no additional cost as part of your current Humana Medicare Advantage Plan†. To learn about the providers and services available in your area, please call the customer service number on the back of your Humana Medicare member ID card.
* Some links on this page may take you to Humana non-Medicare product or service pages or to a different website.
† Other providers may be available in our network.