Hospice vs. Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care): Understanding the Key Differences

Hospice vs. Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care): Understanding the Key Differences

Hospice vs. Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care): Understanding the Key Differences

CEO Mary Kay Sheehan speaks at Drive dedication for former CEO

When faced with a chronic illness, patients and their families often encounter terms like hospice and serious illness care (palliative care). While both are forms of care focused on comfort and quality of life, they have distinct purposes, goals, and timing. In this blog, we will dive into the differences between hospice and palliative care to help you understand how each approach can support you or a loved one during a challenging time.

What is Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care)?

Serious Illness Care is a specialized form of medical care aimed at improving the quality of life for people living with serious or chronic illnesses. It focuses on symptom management, pain relief related to the illness, and emotional support — all with the goal of making the patient feel as comfortable as possible, regardless of whether the illness is terminal or not.

Key Characteristics of Palliative Care

  • For any stage of illness: Serious Illness Care can begin at any point during an illness, even when a patient is still undergoing curative treatment. It does not require a terminal diagnosis. Patients may continue with their primary treatments for their illness (like chemotherapy or surgery) while receiving palliative care.
  • Symptom management: Serious Illness Care teams focus on alleviating physical symptoms such as pain related to the illness, nausea, fatigue, and difficulty breathing, as well as emotional symptoms like anxiety and depression.
  • Skilled, Experienced Care Team: Serious Illness Care is interdisciplinary, meaning it involves a team of nurse practitioners and social workers who address the full spectrum of a patient’s needs. Lightways partners with the patient’s primary physician and/or other healthcare professionals involved in their care to provide another layer of support.
  • Improving quality of life: The primary goal is not to cure illness but to improve the overall quality of life by managing symptoms and supporting the patient and their family.

Who Can Benefit from Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care)?

  • Anyone with a serious illness like cancer, heart failure, COPD, kidney disease, or dementia.
  • People are seeking relief from symptoms, even if their condition is not terminal.
  • Families and caregivers who need emotional and psychological support.

What is Hospice Care?

Hospice care is specifically designed for patients who are nearing the end of life, typically when they are expected to live six months or less. The focus of hospice care shifts to comfort and dignity in the final stages of life, and it is provided when curative treatments are no longer an option or have been chosen to be discontinued.

Key Characteristics of Hospice Care

  • End-of-life care: Hospice is for patients who are no longer pursuing curative treatments and whose illnesses are terminal. It focuses on comfort, pain management, and emotional support.
  • Team-based care: Like palliative care, hospice involves a team of healthcare professionals — including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, nurses’ aides, integrative therapists, chaplains, and volunteers — who support both the patient and their family. The team works together to ensure patients are able to live life to the fullest possible.
  • Home-based or inpatient options: While most hospice patients receive care at home, some may require inpatient care if their symptoms are more severe and need closer monitoring. Hospice services are provided wherever the patient considers their home, whether that’s their house, in a hospice facility, or in a nursing facility.
  • Family support: Hospice care also provides dedicated support for family members, including education about how to provide care and what to expect, respite care, counseling, and grief support services before and after the patient’s death.

Who Can Benefit from Hospice Care?

  • Patients who have a terminal illness and are expected to live six months or less.
  • Patients who have decided to stop curative treatments and focus on comfort and quality of life.
  • Families who need guidance, emotional support, and respite during a loved one’s final days.

Key Differences Between Hospice and Palliative Care

Hospice Vs. Serious Illness Chart

Which Care is Right for You?

The choice between hospice and serious illness care (palliative care) depends on your loved one’s health status and goals. Serious Illness Care is a great option if you are looking for relief from symptoms but still wish to pursue curative treatment. It can be provided at any time during an illness. On the other hand, hospice care is designed for those whose focus shifts away from curing the illness and toward ensuring comfort and dignity in their final days.

Both forms of care aim to improve the patient’s quality of life, but hospice care is more focused on the end-of-life stage, while palliative care can begin earlier in a person’s illness journey. If you are unsure about which type of care is best, speak with your healthcare provider. They can guide you through your options based on your or your loved one’s specific needs. Or please call us and we can help you talk to your physician.

Understanding the difference between hospice and serious illness care can help you make an informed decision about the type of support you or your loved one needs. Whether you are seeking symptom relief during treatment or focusing on comfort and support during the final stages of life, both hospice and serious illness care are designed to ensure that patients receive the care they deserve — tailored to their individual needs and wishes.

Schedule a consultation

Contact Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care directly at 815.740.4104 for additional information or to schedule a consultation.

Joliet hospice offering grief workshop series in May

Joliet hospice offering grief workshop series in May

Joliet hospice offering grief workshop series in May

Fall photo of Lightways outdoor pond in Joliet, IL

Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care in Joliet will offer the workshop on four consecutive Thursdays in May. Pictured are the grounds of Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care, an independent, nonprofit healthcare provider licensed in 11 counties in Illinois. (Denise Unland)

A Joliet hospice organization will offer strategies for coping with grief at a workshop in May.

Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care will offer a Spring Grief Workshop on four consecutive Thursdays in May, according to a news release from Lightways.

These free workshops will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. May 9, May 16, May 23 and May 30. Each workshop will address a different aspect of the grieving process, according to the release.

Registration deadline is May 1. Workshops will be held in-person at Lightways, 320 Water Stone Way in Joliet, as well as virtually.

Patrice Martin, director of grief Support Services at Lightways, said in the release that Lightways grief counselors will lead the workshops. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one is welcome to attend.

“Through the grief process, people will experience not just a wide variety of emotions, but also other grief reactions that often catch us by surprise,” Martin said in the release. “We explore these reactions with our participants and help them to understand where they might be coming from.”

Read the full article at Shaw Local

Lightways Grief Support Services

There is a paradox about grief. Even though it is universal, it can still cause feelings of isolation. Many of our grievers describe the moment after their loved one dies as the moment when “my world stopped, and the rest of the world kept moving.” It can be very disorienting, disruptive, and overwhelming for many. In a world where there is so much discomfort in talking about death and dying, some feel unsupported and unacknowledged in their grief. Lightways is dedicated to ensuring that no one must grieve alone.

read more

Hospice vs. Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care): Understanding the Key Differences

When faced with a chronic illness, patients and their families often encounter terms like hospice and serious illness care (palliative care). While both are forms of care focused on comfort and quality of life, they have distinct purposes, goals, and timing. In this blog, we will dive into the differences between hospice and palliative care to help you understand how each approach can support you or a loved one during a challenging time.

read more

NHPCO 2018 Award

NHPCO 2018 Award

NHPCO 2018 Award

Misc. photos with text NHPCO

Joliet Area Community Hospice (JACH) is proud to announce that one of their volunteers, Jim (J.P) Morgan, was the chosen as one of four recipients nationwide to receive the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) 2018 Volunteers Are the Foundation of Hospice Award in the category of Organizational Support. Morgan was presented with the award at the NHPCO conference in New Orleans on November 6, 2018.

Morgan began his volunteering with Joliet Area Community Hospice ten years ago, shortly after retiring from ExxonMobil. His volunteering began with weekly four-hour shifts in JACH’s 16-bed hospice home inpatient unit, where he would visit patients and respond to their needs and those of family members and staff. After talking about his photography skills, JACH asked Morgan to take photos of the grounds and at events. He soon took on the role of “official” agency photographer at the 13+ events held each year, taking over 7400 photos annually in the process. Ready to help where needed, Morgan became aware of a need in the maintenance department, and now gives at least five hours each week helping maintain JACH’s 39,000 square foot building and 15-acre property.

Morgan has volunteered at least 200 hours every year since he began with JACH, totaling an awe-inspiring 2,433 hours. His volunteering has also impacted JACH financially, as the agency has received $2,000 from ExxonMobil for each year Morgan has volunteered, totaling $20,000 donated to date in his name. Joliet Area Community Hospice is a richer agency in so many ways thanks to Morgan’s considerable contributions! Besides being a cherished volunteer and friend to JACH staff who know him, Morgan. is a devoted son to his 96-year-old father, brother, husband to Maggie, father to three daughters, and proud grandfather to one granddaughter and one grandson. Morgan resides in Joliet, Illinois.

Joliet Area Community Hospice provides compassionate, professional hospice and palliative care to over 30,000 terminally ill patients and their families since 1982. In the past two years alone, Joliet Area Community Hospice provided over $1.3 million in charity care, community bereavement programs, unreimbursed pediatric hospice and palliative care, and community outreach. We are a not-for-profit corporation, state licensed, Medicare/Medicaid certified and supported by United Way of Will and Grundy Counties. We serve patients in greater Will, Grundy, LaSalle, Livingston, and Kendall counties along with portions of Cook, DuPage and Kankakee counties.

The mission of Joliet Area Community Hospice is Real People, Real Care, Your Family.

Lightways Grief Support Services

There is a paradox about grief. Even though it is universal, it can still cause feelings of isolation. Many of our grievers describe the moment after their loved one dies as the moment when “my world stopped, and the rest of the world kept moving.” It can be very disorienting, disruptive, and overwhelming for many. In a world where there is so much discomfort in talking about death and dying, some feel unsupported and unacknowledged in their grief. Lightways is dedicated to ensuring that no one must grieve alone.

read more

Hospice vs. Serious Illness Care (Palliative Care): Understanding the Key Differences

When faced with a chronic illness, patients and their families often encounter terms like hospice and serious illness care (palliative care). While both are forms of care focused on comfort and quality of life, they have distinct purposes, goals, and timing. In this blog, we will dive into the differences between hospice and palliative care to help you understand how each approach can support you or a loved one during a challenging time.

read more