§ 40:2182 — Definitions

§2182. Definitions
As used in this Part:
(1) "Autonomous" refers to a separate and distinct operational entity
which functions under its own administration and bylaws, either within or
independently of a parent organization.
(2) "Core services" are nursing services, physician services, social
work services, counseling services, and support services, including trained
volunteers, and bereavement and pastoral care.
(3) "Department" means the Louisiana Department of Health.
(4) "Hospice" means an autonomous, centrally administered, medically
directed program providing a continuum of home, outpatient, and homelike
inpatient care for the terminally ill patient and his family. It employs an
interdisciplinary team to assist in providing palliative and supportive care to
meet the special needs arising out of the physical, emotional, spiritual, social,
and economic stresses which are experienced during the final stages of illness
and during dying and bereavement.
(5) "Interdisciplinary team" includes representatives from all of the
core services as evidenced by documentation, planning, and team meetings.
(6) "Palliative care" means the reduction or abatement of pain or other
troubling symptoms by appropriate coordination of all services of the hospice
care team required to achieve needed relief of distress.
(7) "Terminally ill" refers to a medical prognosis of limited expected
survival, of approximately six months or less at the time of referral to a
hospice, of an individual who is experiencing an illness for which therapeutic
strategies directed toward cure and control of the disease alone are no longer
appropriate.

Legislative History

Acts 1988, No. 941, §2.