Supportive and Palliative Care
Palliative care improves quality of life for patients living with serious illness and their loved ones by relieving symptoms and stress. Whatever your age or illness stage, you can receive palliative care along with other medical treatments. Care is provided in a setting that best fits the patient’s needs, whether that is the outpatient clinic, patient’s home, a care facility, or elsewhere.
Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula’s palliative medicine experts can help you:
- Ease pain, discomfort, and other symptoms
- Understand your illness and treatment options
- Make decisions about your care according to your priorities and values
- Communicate with your doctors and other care providers
- Manage anxiety, stress, and depression
Take a quick quiz on the Get Palliative Care website to see if palliative care is right for you.
Starting palliative care
If you or a family member are interested in palliative care services, talk with your doctor. A palliative specialist will visit you in the hospital or you can make an appointment for an outpatient clinic visit. The provider will get to know you and learn about your wants and needs, and help you identify what is important to you whether you hope to sleep better, breathe easier, spend more time with your family, or something else.
Compassionate team of specialists
Your team may include various professionals, all of whom h ave specialized training and expertise in palliative care:
- Medical director, nurse practitioner, and pharmacist — Diagnose conditions, prescribe medications to control symptoms, and discuss goals of care
- Social worker — Counsels you and your loved ones as you cope with a serious illness and directs you to helpful community or government resources, such as support groups, legal and financial aid, or in-home care
- Chaplain — Offers interfaith, spiritual support to cope with a difficult illness
Each specialist works in their own unique way to meet your goals.
Your primary care provider's role
Your primary care provider will still oversee your overall care and treatment for your illness. We’ll tell your doctor about all the care you get in the hospital.
Insurance covers palliative care
Insurance providers usually cover palliative care, just as they cover many other medical specialties. Learn about insurance plans we accept.
Palliative care vs. hospice care
Palliative medicine focuses on helping you feel comfortable and in control of your healthcare. You can receive palliative care at the same time as you get treatment to cure or slow the progression of a disease. For example, if a patient is undergoing a treatment that has negative side effects, palliative care can be used to help manage those side effects.
Hospice care is a special medical benefit. It provides a range of services to people with a terminal illness who wish to focus on comfort rather than curative treatment. Patients in hospice choose not to receive any further diagnostic procedures or treatments focused on curing their illness.
