When do you know it is time to call hospice?

The doctor in charge of his care currently will decide that for you when there is nothing more the doctor or nurses that come to his house can do for him and they can get that set up for you.. same thing happening to my father. He only eats a very tiny meal once a day now... no appetite. It’s nust part of the dying process.. and Old immobile patients don’t have an appetite ... they just sleep all day.... home health sends an aide out to their house twice a week to bed bathe him and fhs RN comes out once a week to take vitals and assessments..?since physical therapy is no longer an option for him anymore because they saw no improvement in his condition ... we are patiently waiting for the family nurse practitioner who comes out every couple of months to go over the RN’s notes to decide when they can’t do anything more for him and will set him up on hospice... my mom is his only caretaker

Countrymouse is correct. Your dad can live on Boost for a while. Many elderly people do. Something that's stronger and healthier than Boost is a will to live. If your dad has lost that all the Boost in the world won't end up making much of a difference. Refusing to eat is often a beginning of the end. But it can be a slow end. My mom gave up, lived on one Ensure a day, stayed in bed and we lost her just a few months later. Her cancer had been removed and she had gone to rehab. On paper she was healthy. But her will to live was gone. And being immobile is so detrimental to someone's health as well.

As Countrymouse suggested, calling for a hospice evaluation won't hurt anything, it won't commit you to their service. It's covered by Medicare. The yardstick hospice uses to gauge if a person needs their service is do they believe the person has 6 months or less to live. Hospice does a comprehensive evaluation on which to base their recommendation. If hospice decides to proceed they will supply your dad with everything he needs such as a hospital bed, incontinence supplies, and a bath aide, He'll most likely be released from rehab to go home and he and the family will have everything needed to make sure he's comfortable. You'll have 24/7 access to a hospice nurse who has access to the doctor. And when a person goes on hospice it doesn't mean that they're going to die that day. I've seen families who have brought hospice on and begin a bedside vigil the same day. Hospice isn't a trigger, it's just another standard of care.

Well. Boost will keep you going more or less indefinitely if you drink enough of it, in theory at least.

How long has your father been in rehab? What brought him there?

A hospice evaluation commits you to nothing and provides a useful baseline assessment. It really can't hurt to ask about it. Please let us know how you're getting on, anyway.