DR. KAREN REICHOW: There is one more person, the
attending physician.
PAT BRADFORD: If I’m ill and I’m taken to the hospital, it
takes two doctors to say that it’s time?
DR. THOMAS LEE: That you are qualified.
PAT BRADFORD: That I’m qualified for hospice, it is an
option. And who makes the decisions?
DR. KAREN REICHOW: Hospice exists to have a plan and you
can only have a plan when you coordinate a lot of care with a lot
of people and one of those is the attending physician. Just because
you’re going to have hospice services doesn’t mean you give up
your doctor. It just means you get another one as well. You get a
hospice physician who helps coordinate the care with your own
physician and then all of these people work together.
PAT BRADFORD: Who pays for it?
DR. KAREN REICHOW: Well, there is the Medicare hospice
benefit which is probably how most people have hospice, so it’s
part of the Medicare benefit. I like to tell families: you already paid
into all of this care, you should use it, and it’s a very lucrative
benefit because it pays for your medicines and the equipment you
need and all of these people to take care of you. We try to keep
people at home and help them live as well as they can at home
because it’s less expensive than being in the hospital at the end of
life, where you might get a lot of treatments that aren’t going to
do you any good. If you’re not a Medicare beneficiary yet, most
commercial insurances have a hospice benefit as well.
NICOLE FREEBOURN: Medicaid and private insurance have
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two different processes of getting it
approved than Medicare.
SELENA BOYETTE: Lower Cape Fear
Hospice is nonprofit. As a nonprofit, we
have a foundation to help support us and
we’re able to serve patients regardless of
the ability to pay.
REV. JD SIMMONS: Are some
hospices for profit?
NICOLE FREEBOURN: Yes, but let me
clarify that. That doesn’t make the care any
different and it doesn’t make the benefit
any different. It’s just set up differently,
kind of like tax language. But we also have
funds and access to things should we have somebody who is not
insured or has very little resources. It’s just classified differently.
SELENA BOYETTE: My granddad passed away last year and
where he lived there wasn’t a not-for-profit hospice, but his hospice
services were good. On his obituary that I see every morning in
my Bible it says that donations should be made in lieu of flowers
because of the impact that hospice had.
REV. JD SIMMONS: I see that a lot. I ask every hospice person
I meet, ‘Where do you guys get your training because you’re all
the same?’ In Maine, in Tennessee, in Ohio, in Florida, in North
Carolina, it’s like they’re cloned, they’re all the same; all compas-sionate,
caring, loving people. I think that’s the thing that needs
to be emphasized to the public, that this is not a cold, sterile place.
This is a warm kind, gentle ministry.
PAT BRADFORD: It’s a cliché to say that death can be beautiful,
but it can be.
REV. JD SIMMONS: Precious in the sight of the Lord the death
of his faithful servants.
NICOLE FREEBOURN: You see a peace sometimes, if you’ve
ever sat with somebody who has passed or who is passing. It’s this
transition that is just amazing and powerful.
REV. JD SIMMONS: Bottom line for me is, if I ever need it:
I want to go to hospice.
PAT BRADFORD: Me, too.
CAROLE GREEN: Bottom line.
REV. JD SIMMONS: Bottom line.
DR. KAREN REICHOW: If you ever need it? Wait a minute.
Tina Stancill is an Official Court Reporter for the state of North Carolina. She is a Registered Professional Reporter, a
Registered Merit Reporter and a Certified Realtime Reporter. She is a member of the National Court Reporters Association
and is a past president of the North Carolina Court Reporters Association. For the past 27 years she has served in her
capacity as a court reporter in Superior Court at the New Hanover County Courthouse.