Palliative Care vs. Home Health: 3 Key Differences

Home health agencies address medical needs through different care models. Whether you provide palliative or home healthcare, expanding your services into either specialty can help you scale your agency. However, understanding the differences between palliative care vs. home healthcare is essential. 

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is a specialized type of care for patients with a severe or terminal illness, provided alongside curative care. The goal of palliative care services is to meet a patient’s physical, spiritual, and psychosocial needs to improve quality of life and ease suffering.

Palliative care is sometimes called hospice care, but these are different. Hospice patients receive hospice care at home at the end of life when curative treatments no longer work. However, the goal is similar to palliative care: improve symptoms and quality of life. 

What Is Home Health?

Home health also provides medical care for patients in their homes but through a different model. Where palliative and home hospice care aim to ease suffering and improve quality of life, home healthcare helps patients recover from an illness or injury, treat a chronic condition, and regain independence. These home treatments are typically as effective as care in a hospital or skilled nursing facility but are less expensive. 

Main Differences Between Palliative Care vs. Home Health

Home health and palliative care have different treatment goals, care teams, settings, and durations, affecting how agencies operate. 

1. Differences in Treatment Goals and Patient Care Approach

Where home healthcare focuses on curative care, the goal of palliative services is comfort care, but it may also include curative treatments. Home health services can help with:

• Frequent falls 
• Mobility issues
• Wound care
• Injections
• Nutrition therapy
• Intravenous therapies
• Health status monitoring

Palliative care, on the other hand, addresses symptoms and concerns related to complex or end-stage disease. The focus is to control symptoms early on to prevent and ease suffering and provide the patient with comfort and dignity. Palliative care addresses common concerns, including:

• Pain
• Difficulty breathing
• Nausea
• Anxiety 
• Depression
• Fatigue

2. Care Team Composition and Skill Sets

Both forms of care rely on an integrated team of healthcare providers and other professionals. A palliative care team includes a wide array of healthcare providers who are on call 24/7 for patient support, including: 

• Physician 
• Palliative care specialists
• Nurses 
• Social workers
• Pharmacists 
• Spiritual leaders 
• Counselors
• Physical therapists

Home healthcare, on the other hand, is often performed by a home health nurse or aide. Nurses provide medical treatment, such as injections and IVs, and home health aides help with basic patient care, monitoring vitals and pain, and medication management.  

Other home healthcare providers may include:

• Medical social worker
• Physical therapist
• Occupational therapist
• Dietitian

Where palliative care includes around-the-clock, on-call support, home healthcare is intermittent care, often set by appointment.

3. Duration and Setting of Care

There are additional differences in the duration and setting of care. Patients can and often do receive palliative care at home but may also receive care in a nursing facility, hospital setting, or other health center. Home healthcare, however, is delivered only in the home. 

Additionally, palliative care lasts longer than home healthcare. Patients are eligible for palliative care at any stage of a chronic or serious illness, often right after diagnosis. 

Home health services are available in 30-day blocks. There are no limits to the number of days a week a patient can receive care as long it is:

• Less than 8 hours in a day
• 28 hours or less in a week
• No more than 21 days in a 30-day block

How to Go About Expanding Your Home Health Agency?

Expanding your home health agency into palliative care requires understanding your patients’ needs and current operations. Assess your staffing requirements and efficiencies and look for any gaps. Home health solutions with analytics functions can help you collect data and identify trends in your agency. 

For example, a small agency might struggle to cover multiple lines of service, such as pediatrics and geriatrics. Instead, you might develop specialty population or disease programs and build relationships with other agencies or health systems to fill those gaps. These partnerships and programs provide opportunities for growth and increased referrals, especially if your agency is one of a few offering specialty care. 

Additionally, leveraging technology is critical. Automation, rules-based systems, and mobile technology enable easier document management, freeing up time to focus on patients and care. Agency staff have better access to medical records, physician orders, and patient updates to facilitate care at scale. 

Automate Processes and Scale With Ease

Home health tools and technology are essential to agency management. Automated processes eliminate manual data entry, track physician orders, and streamline referrals, creating a faster transition to care. 

Innovative software like WorldView simplifies document management for easier operations and a lower administrative burden for home health agencies, promoting effortless growth. Schedule a demo and learn how to scale your agency with WorldView.