VITAS® Healthcare – 40 Years Strong

VITAS Healthcare is the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care and has operated a hospice program in Western Pennsylvania since 2005. Founded in 1978 in Florida and now operating 47 programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia, VITAS specializes in hospice care for patients and their families as they embrace quality of life near the end of life.

At VITAS in Pittsburgh, 130 staff members care for, on average, 230 patients each day—seriously ill people who have been certified by a physician as having a life expectancy of six months or less if the underlying disease follows its normal course. A hospice team surrounds each patient and family with physical, emotional and psychosocial support that focuses on managing a patient’s symptoms, easing pain and giving patients and families the gift of time in their final months, weeks, days and hours together.

VITAS has continued to lead the American hospice movement, committed to finding and closing gaps in end-of-life care. VITAS ensures that terminally ill patients of all walks of life and their families have access to compassionate and high-quality hospice care.

Now in its 40th year of operation, VITAS has been an influential advocate and champion for compassionate hospice and palliative care for patients with life-limiting illnesses. It also has created protocols that address the needs of high-acuity patients, such as those who struggle with severe, complex symptoms or have been diagnosed with more than one serious illness.

VITAS employees are the hearts, hands and experts of the VITAS way of doing hospice. They are the reason families have invited VITAS into their homes for 40 years.

Nationwide, VITAS employs 12,176 professionals who care for terminally ill patients daily, most of it in patients’ homes. Care also is provided in the company’s 27 inpatient hospice units and in hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living communities/residential care facilities for older Americans. At the end of 2018, VITAS reported an average daily patient census of 18,136.

VITAS also helps patients discuss their wishes for compassionate end-of-life care and document their preferences in an advance directive, such as a living will, Five Wishes form or a durable power of attorney for healthcare decisions.

For more information about end-of-life care options in Pittsburgh, call VITAS® Healthcare at (866) 759-6695 or visit VITAS.com.

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