Vidant Health joins others across the state in recognizing Home Care and Hospice Month | Eastern NC Now

Press Release:

    GREENVILLE, NC     November is National Home Care and Hospice Care Month, a time set aside to honor those who attend to the in-home health, hospice and community-based care needs of the state's citizens in the comfort and privacy of their homes.

    Vidant Health would like to recognize its nearly 250 employees and 200 volunteers who are part of the team providing home health, telehealth and hospice care for patients in eastern North Carolina. Vidant provided more than 60,000 home visits to more than 5,500 patients this year.

    "We consider it an honor and privilege to be invited into a patient's home to provide care," said Scottie Gaskins, senior administrator, HealthAccess. "The Vidant Home Health and Hospice Staff view their roles not as a job, but as a calling, and provide care to patients and families with great pride."

    Health care provided in the comfort and security of an individual's home through a licensed home health or hospice agency gives individuals, their family, and friends, a sense of control and peace of mind. In-home care provides a wide range of health care and social services to the patient and teaches families to help care for their family member.

    Home Health provides clinical care for patients who have a skilled need for nursing or therapy care and have a taxing effort to leave the home to get the care they need. Patients have a personalized care plan from their doctor to allow nurses, aides, therapist and other staff to visit the patient in their home to help manage and improve their condition or rehabilitate from surgery or injury.

    Hospice is a special way of caring for individuals who are in the final stage of their lives due to a terminal illness which focuses on comfort care and symptom management, while also providing support to the patient and their family to assure the highest quality of life even at the end of life. The services provide the greatest degree of independence, freedom and dignity possible for patients, allowing them to remain at home, close to their family and friends, in familiar surroundings and when needed may also use inpatient care such as at the Service League of Greenville Inpatient Hospice.

    "The fact is, home- and community-based care is itself a cost-saving program for the state and federal government," says Tim Rogers, president and CEO of the Association for Home & Hospice Care of North Carolina. "On average, patients who receive care at home, regardless of the level of care, receive that care at a significant savings."

    While care at home is less costly than health care in hospitals or institutional settings, it does not sacrifice on the quality of the clinical staff and the level of care and service they provide to the patient and family.

• Contact: Beth Anne Atkins
•     beth.atkins@vidanthealth.com