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144A.75 Definitions; service requirements.

Subdivision 1. Applicability. For the purposes of sections 144A.75 to 144A.756, the following terms have the meanings given them.

Subd. 2. Commissioner. "Commissioner" means the commissioner of health.

Subd. 3. Core services. "Core services" means physician services, registered nursing services, medical social services, and counseling services. A hospice must ensure that at least two core services are regularly provided directly by hospice employees. A hospice provider may use contracted staff if necessary to supplement hospice employees in order to meet the needs of patients during peak patient loads or under extraordinary circumstances.

Subd. 4. Counseling services. "Counseling services" includes bereavement counseling provided after the patient's death and spiritual and other counseling services for the individual and the family while enrolled in hospice care. Bereavement services must be provided according to a plan of care that reflects the needs of the family for up to one year following the death of the patient.

Subd. 5. Hospice provider. "Hospice provider" means an individual, organization, association, corporation, unit of government, or other entity that is regularly engaged in the delivery, directly or by contractual arrangement, of hospice services for a fee to terminally ill hospice patients. A hospice must provide all core services.

Subd. 6. Hospice patient. "Hospice patient" means an individual who has been diagnosed as terminally ill, with a probable life expectancy of under one year, as documented by the individual's attending physician and hospice medical director, who alone or, when unable, through the individual's family has voluntarily consented to and received admission to a hospice provider.

Subd. 7. Hospice patient's family. "Hospice patient's family" means relatives of the hospice patient, the hospice patient's guardian or primary caregiver, or persons identified by the hospice patient as having significant personal ties.

Subd. 8. Hospice services; hospice care. "Hospice services" or "hospice care" means palliative and supportive care and other services provided by an interdisciplinary team under the direction of an identifiable hospice administration to terminally ill hospice patients and their families to meet the physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, and special needs experienced during the final stages of illness, dying, and bereavement. These services are provided through a centrally coordinated program that ensures continuity and consistency of home and inpatient care that is provided directly or through an agreement.

Subd. 9. Interdisciplinary team. "Interdisciplinary team" means a group of qualified individuals with expertise in meeting the special needs of hospice patients and their families, including, at a minimum, those individuals who are providers of core services.

Subd. 10. Medical director. "Medical director" means a licensed physician who is knowledgeable about palliative medicine and assumes overall responsibility for the medical component of the hospice care program.

Subd. 11. Other services. "Other services" means physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, nutritional counseling, and volunteers.

Subd. 12. Palliative care. "Palliative care" means the total active care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Control of pain, of other symptoms, and of psychological, social, and spiritual problems is paramount. The goal of palliative care is the achievement of the best quality of life for patients and their families.

Subd. 13. Residential hospice facility. "Residential hospice facility" means a facility that resembles a single-family home located in a residential area that directly provides 24-hour residential and support services in a home-like setting for hospice patients as an integral part of the continuum of home care provided by a hospice and that houses:

(1) no more than eight hospice patients; or

(2) at least nine and no more than 12 hospice patients with the approval of the local governing authority, notwithstanding section 462.357, subdivision 8.

Subd. 14. Volunteer services. "Volunteer services" means services by volunteers who provide a personal presence that augments a variety of professional and nonprofessional services available to the hospice patient, the hospice patient's family, and the hospice provider.

HIST: 2002 c 252 s 13,24

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Revisor of Statutes