HHA vs Hospice, compare/contrast?

[SuzieVN]

Both are relatively insecure. or unstable as income goes?

HHA pays better?

HHA goal is to keep people out of acute or LTC?

Hospice goal is palliative, hopefully they die at home, rather than inpatient hospice place?

HHA has more nursing tasks, hospice is more coping and comfort. Unless they have skilled services also= Ivs, therapy (does that still happen?).

Thanks, trying to differentiate all the care options before I even begin to plan to seek work.

Driving around has no appeal to me, but the horror stories of LTC, well...

One more thing, can you tell HHA or hospice that you want to stay in a certain area, for instance, so many miles in any direction? Do they make any attempt to localixe each nurse's territory? Not sure they would care since they don't provide the vehicles.

[RNFL1991]

I can't answer all of your questions because I don't know a lot about hospice, but I'm a home health nurse and I can tell you that the goal of HHC is to keep patients in their home (not in the hospital, nursing home, etc) while also making sure they are SAFE in their home. Hospice is palliative, as you mentioned. I don't know about hospice pay but I do know that HHC (in Florida at least) as an RN case manager pays much better than the hospital. As far as territory, I believe most agencies try to make the areas manageable, but some are better than others with that. I'm lucky because my territory is right where I live, and most days I stay in that area. But I've known some nurses who had to drive a lot farther than I would want to. I think most places want to make it manageable because even though they don't provide the vehicles, they pay mileage. Also, I would think patient satisfaction would be a consideration at most companies. If you're driving too far between patients, you can't manage your day and you'll be late for the scheduled appointment times.

[salvadordolly]

The major difference as I see it, is the on-call requirements. Home health has very little on-call, they usually have a dedicated person for this. Hospice has a lot of on-call time. You will have to spend the last few hours of your patient's life in their home when it comes up, usually on-call. If it is a larger company, you can obviously rotate through more people.

I haven't found either to be lacking for work or unstable. There's plenty of work.