Hospice, nursing home or senior home
In Bulgaria, synonyms such as “hospice”, “nursing home” or “home for the elderly” are often used, without making a clear distinction between the different types of care. However, this is of great importance, especially when it comes to the fate of people close and dear to you in serious health conditions who need specialized medical support.
In many places, social institutions are registered as homes for the elderly, but in practice they accept people with serious illnesses, dementia and terminal conditions. This creates a risk that care will be provided by staff who do not have the necessary medical qualifications and equipment required by the standard for medical institutions.
Hospice – a healthcare service with high standards
Hospices are medical institutions registered under the Medical Institutions Act and additionally – under the Social Services Act, when they offer integrated care. Control over their activities is carried out by the Ministry of Health and the Executive Agency for Medical Supervision. This guarantees high requirements for staff, equipment and the environment.
In contrast, nursing homes are registered only as social services. The requirements for them are lighter and include basic household care – food, shelter, social support. Medical activities are not leading, but are provided only when needed.
Who needs hospice care?
Hospice is suitable not only for people with severe, irreversible illnesses or in the terminal stage. Here, patients who have experienced:
- Stroke, heart attack or other acute conditions
- Operations and major surgical interventions
- Serious injuries, wound treatment
- Patients in need of alternative (or specialized) nutrition, including nasogastric tube, gastrostomy or parenteral nutrition
- Hospice care is also suitable for patients with disorders of the excretory system - for example, when it is necessary to maintain a permanent catheter, incontinence conditions, changing uro- or rectal catheters, as well as in the presence of a stoma. These conditions require monitoring and medical intervention by trained personnel, which cannot be reliably provided at home.
Such patients are often discharged from the hospital before full recovery, and in a home environment there is no possibility to provide them with the necessary monitoring, intravenous infusions, rehabilitation or sanitary care.
It is in such cases that hospice provides a bridge between hospital treatment and home care, with the aim of recovery and a return to the best possible quality of life.
The hospice team includes a doctor, nurses and trained caregivers who care not only for the physical condition, but also for emotional stability and hope for recovery.
Nursing home
Nursing homes, also popularly called "nursing homes", provide primarily residential care - for people who, due to age or disability, need help with everyday life, but are not in a serious medical condition.
Residential care is a form of long-term care in which a person lives permanently in a specialized facility, where they are provided with the necessary assistance for daily living, general medical care, monitoring and social support.
In lower-priced nursing homes (generally they are mostly state or municipal), rooms are often shared, and sanitary facilities are shared.
Nursing homes with luxurious accommodation conditions (or when advertised as such) are often also called "residences".
In nursing homes, care focuses on social aspects - meals, company, activities. They are not required to have medical equipment or a constant medical presence.
How to recognize a licensed hospice?
If you want to be sure that you are entrusting the care of your loved one to a licensed hospice, you can do a quick check in the official public register of medical institutions, maintained by the National Health Information System:
Check if the hospice is licensed
On the Internet you will find many sources that offer lists of hospices, including social networks with opinions and reviews, but they are private projects and the reliability of the information cannot be guaranteed, and in many cases it is falsified for commercial purposes and even misleading.
Unfortunately, in many of these sources, as well as in advertisements in search engines and websites, many ads mislead searchers by presenting themselves as hospices without actually being such. Some do have a license for nursing homes, but there are also those that are completely fake and accept patients completely illegally, speculating on the suffering and worries of the sick and their relatives.
The presentation of nursing homes as hospices, although harmful to the patients and their relatives, is not always malicious. It is often an expression of medical incompetence or a desire for the advertisement of a given facility to be displayed in a search that has a large volume, urgency and urgency.
The most authoritative and reliable source for verification is the Public Register of Outpatient Care Hospitals and Hospices (LZIBPH) on the website of the National Health Information System:
License check: opendata.his.bg/lzibph
Enter the name of the hospice or the number of the medical facility.
For Hospice Marinela, you can directly use our identification number 221835100504 to verify our legality and registration.
The Certificate of Registration of Hospice Marinela is presented on the home page of the site
