Palliative Care
Meridian Care Journey
Meridian Care Journey, our palliative care program, focuses on improving the quality of life of people facing serious illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, lung disease, kidney or liver failure, and neurological disorders like stroke and Alzheimer's Disease. Along with the treatment of your illness, emphasis is placed on pain and symptom management, improved communication, and coordination of your care. This program will also help you with advanced care planning; a process of sharing your values, preferences, and expectations for your care with your physician - a very important component in ensuring your quality of life as you get older or your illness progresses.
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Download our Meridian Care Journey brochure
Download our Important Decisions brochure
Download our Living Will Declaration
Download our Living Will Declaration (En Español)
Four Common Misconceptions about Palliative Care
- Myth: If you are receiving palliative care, you must be dying.
Reality: Palliative care is appropriate at any time during an illness, even at the time your diagnosis is made.
- Myth: You must give up all curative treatments to receive palliative care.
Reality: Palliative care is given in conjunction with curative treatments.
- Myth: Palliative care is synonymous with hospice care.
Reality: Unlike hospice care, patients receiving palliative care do not have to accept comfort as the primary goal of treatment or have a prognosis of 6-months or less. Palliative care patients do not have to forgo curative treatment of their underlying disease or acute hospitalization for the disease.
- Myth: If you opt for palliative care, you are giving up and will die more quickly.
Reality: Palliative care has not only been shown to improve quality of life, decrease the use of aggressive treatments at the end of life, and reduce depression, but it has also been shown to prolong life for patients with advanced lung cancer. There is research being done today on the effect of palliative care on the prognosis of patients with other serious illnesses.
