URMC / Medicine / Palliative Care / Patient and Family Care
Patient and Family Care
Helping people with serious illness live their best life possible.
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative Care is specialized medical care provided by an interdisciplinary team who:
- Treat the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of serious illness.
- Explore each person’s unique priorities, hopes, worries, and preferences, to ensure that their treatment plan honors their values.
- Provide support to patients and their loved ones throughout the course of living with serious illness.
Palliative Care is available to patients of all ages and through all stages of serious illness: from diagnosis, through the ups and downs of disease-directed and potentially curative care, and sometimes through the end of life.
What is Hospice Care?
Hospice Care is not the same as Palliative Care; rather, Hospice Care is one kind of Palliative Care, specifically for people who are expected to die soon and are no longer receiving disease-directed treatments. Our Palliative Care team does provide Hospice Care, along with the Hospice team, when an eligible patient chooses this plan.
Delivering the Care that Honors Your Values, Where You Are