Hospice is a philosophy that embraces the whole person, and provides physical, emotional and spiritual support of your seriously-ill patients and their families.  Hospice of Rockingham County seeks to add as much dignity and quality as possible to the time a patient may have, be that days, weeks, or months. The focus of hospice care is comfort – pain control and symptom management – rather than curing a patient’s disease.  For a brief video testimonial from one of our patients that was recently created for a local United Way campaign, please click here.

All patients admitted to Hospice of Rockingham County’s services must have an attending physician that will certify the patient’s prognosis for admission to the program. However, initial contact can come directly from someone close to the patient – family, friend, clergy, neighbor.

Hospice criteria requires that the certifying physician feels that the patient has six months or less to live, if the disease follows its normal and expected course.  That being said, HRC too often receives referrals for patients in their last weeks (and sometimes only days) of life.  The sooner a patient begins receiving end-of-life care, the greater the benefit to the patient, their caregiver, and their family. For a list of cues that may indicate it is time to talk to your patient about the advantages of hospice care, please click here.

Criteria for Admission to Hospice of Rockingham County:

  • Attending physician’s certification of prognosis of six months or less
  • Goal of comfort care and no further curative, aggressive treatment
  • Patient lives in Rockingham County, Caswell County, Guilford County, or Stokes County. (Click here for a map of our service area)

Medicare offers local coverage determinations as guidelines in deeming a patient eligible for hospice services.  In addition to Medicare’s general guidelines and the Karnofsky Scale (for quantifying a patient’s functional status), the criteria for the most commonly used diagnoses are found below:

To make a referral, click here to download a copy of our Fax Referral Form; the fax form lists the necessary documentation we will need for assessment. During normal business hours, you may also make a referral by calling our switchboard at (336) 427-9022.  For after-hours and/or weekend referrals, you may use the fax form and fax to (336) 427-0744 or contact our on-call nurse at (336) 427-9028.

When the time comes for your patient to choose a hospice provider, they may need additional information about local hospices. The National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization developed a set of questions to ask potential providers to help in the decision-making process. HRC has answered these questions as they pertain to our organization and hope this may be helpful in selecting a hospice.  As always, if you or your patient should have additional questions, we encourage a call to our office at (336) 427-9022.  Click here to view NHPCO’s questions and HRC’s responses.

Additionally, Medicare recently published results of their family satisfaction survey; for additional information on how our families rated our care, click here to access an article about HRC’s survey results.

For additional information about Hospice of Rockingham County that may be helpful to you or to your patients, please click here for information about our program.