By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer

The Hospice movement in the United States has helped patients die comfortably, often at home, since it was introduced in 1974. The patients must be diagnosed with a terminal disease and have been given less than six months to live. The patient remains under the care of the original doctor but is tended to by a team that includes a nurse who can help with medication, a social worker to help the care-giver with benefits, an aide to help with routine needs like bathing, volunteers to relieve the care-giver and watch the patient when needed, and a spiritual counselor to help comfort the soul. The program seeks to ensure that patients don't die in pain, alone and forgotten. The program also provides bereavement services for survivors.

At any one time, about 90 patients will be on St. Joseph Hospital's Hospice program; last year it helped 594 live better lives at the end. But only about half the patients locally and nationally who are eligible for hospice are referred to the program. It is a problem particularly with lower-income patients, who traditionally have taken care of their own family at the end, said Bernice Harper, medical care adviser for the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration.

``They've been caring for their parents all these years; they just didn't call it home care,'' Dr. Harper said. The problem is that many of these patients are resigned to dying in pain because it has always happened that way, and they don't seek hospice when it can help, she said.

``Nobody has to die racked in pain these days,'' she said. The National Hospice Organization has formed a task force to address the problem and is seeking to educate doctors and patients about the option.