Hospice and Palliative Care in Central Ohio: What Families Actually Need to Know

Two words that get used interchangeably mean very different things — and for families across our seven counties, knowing the difference changes what you can ask for, and how early you can ask for it.

By Priya Anand, RN · Published July 31, 2026

The Two Words Families Mix Up Constantly

Almost every week, someone calls us having just been told by a hospital social worker that it might be time to "talk to palliative," and they hear the word as a euphemism. It isn't. Palliative care is symptom-focused care — pain, breathlessness, nausea, fatigue, the exhaustion of managing six specialists — and it can run alongside treatment aimed at curing or controlling a disease. A 78-year-old in Westerville going through chemotherapy can have a palliative team managing side effects the entire time, and many do.

Hospice is narrower and more specific. It is a defined Medicare benefit available when two physicians certify a prognosis of six months or less if the illness follows its expected course, and electing it generally means stepping away from curative treatment for that particular condition. Every hospice program delivers palliative care. Not every palliative care program is hospice. (We keep a short reference answer on that distinction in our FAQ as well.) Families who learn that distinction early tend to accept help months sooner than families who spend those months believing the two words mean the same thing.

Ohio Licenses Hospice on Its Own Track

This is a detail that trips people up when they start comparing options. In Ohio, a hospice care program is licensed under its own chapter of the Revised Code — Chapter 3712 — administered by the Ohio Department of Health, and that license runs for three years before it has to be renewed. Any hospital, nursing home, home for the aged or other health facility that wants to run a hospice program has to hold that license specifically; being licensed as something else doesn't cover it.

The practical consequence for a central Ohio family is that a hospice team and an assisted living community are two separately licensed entities that cooperate. The hospice team comes to the resident. The building's own license doesn't change because a resident elects hospice, and the hospice's license doesn't extend to the building.

The Four Levels of Care Medicare Pays For

Families often assume hospice is one thing. It's actually four, and knowing the names is genuinely useful when you're on the phone trying to get a symptom crisis handled at two in the morning.

Routine home care is the default and accounts for the overwhelming majority of hospice days nationally — a nurse, aide, social worker and chaplain visiting on a schedule wherever the person lives. Continuous home care is what you ask for during a brief crisis: predominantly nursing care, delivered at home, for as long as it takes to get the situation stable again. It exists precisely so that a bad night doesn't automatically become an ambulance ride, and it is chronically underused because families don't know to ask for it by name.

General inpatient care is short-term treatment in a Medicare-certified hospice inpatient unit or hospital when symptoms can't be safely managed where the person is living. Respite care covers up to five consecutive days in an approved facility, not because the patient needs it, but because the caregiver does. In our experience, the adult daughter in Grove City who has been sleeping in a recliner for four months is the single most common candidate for respite who has never been told it exists.

Where Hospice Actually Happens Around Columbus

Hospice is a service, not a place. It travels to a private home in Hilliard, to a memory care neighborhood in Delaware County, to a skilled nursing floor in Lancaster. That flexibility is the point — and it's why the question "should Dad go to hospice?" is usually the wrong question. The better one is: "if Dad elects hospice, what changes about where he lives and who comes to see him?"

Central Ohio does also have dedicated inpatient hospice houses for the general inpatient level, which is where the geography starts to matter. If a family lives in Union or Madison County and the nearest inpatient hospice unit is in Columbus or Lancaster, that's a real drive to factor in — not a reason to rule anything out, but a reason to ask early rather than during a crisis.

The Providers Central Ohio Families Ask About Most

We don't rank hospices and we don't accept anything from them, so treat what follows as orientation rather than a recommendation. OhioHealth Hospice House in Columbus — formerly and still widely called Kobacker House — is a 32-bed inpatient hospice facility on McConnell Drive, with eight lodges next door at Big Red's Lodges where out-of-town family can stay with kitchenettes and their own bathrooms. That last detail matters more than it sounds like it does when siblings are flying in from three states.

Mount Carmel Hospice & Palliative Care serves the same seven-county footprint we do — Franklin, Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union — with in-home hospice care. Ohio's Hospice, which many longtime residents still know as Hospice of Central Ohio, has provided care in the region since 1982 and operates from offices including Newark, Columbus, Lancaster and Zanesville. FAIRHOPE Hospice & Palliative Care, also founded in 1982, is based on Sells Road in Lancaster and serves Fairfield and neighboring counties; it operates The Pickering House inpatient facility and the Anita M. Turner Center for Grief. Zusman Community Hospice at Wexner Heritage Village in Bexley staffs a team including a medical director, RN case manager, STNAs, social workers, clergy and volunteers.

Service areas, ownership and program details change — sometimes quickly. Confirm current coverage for a specific address directly with the provider rather than relying on any directory, including this one.

The Room-and-Board Question Nobody Explains Up Front

Here is the single most common billing shock we hear about. The Medicare hospice benefit covers the hospice team, medications, equipment and supplies related to the terminal diagnosis. It does not cover room and board when the person lives in an assisted living community or a nursing home. Those monthly charges keep coming from the residence, in full, on top of the hospice benefit.

Families hear "hospice is covered by Medicare" and reasonably conclude the whole arrangement is paid for. It isn't, and discovering that in month two — while grieving — is avoidable. Ask the residence directly, before electing hospice, exactly what its charges will be during hospice and whether any level-of-care adjustment applies.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Choose

Most families in our area have several licensed hospices to choose from, and are never told that choosing is theirs to do. A few questions that reliably separate programs: How quickly does a nurse physically arrive after an after-hours call — not "we have a 24-hour line," but how long until someone is at the door? Do you provide continuous home care, and how often did you actually use it last year? Which inpatient unit would we go to if general inpatient care became necessary, and how far is it from us? Will the same nurse case manager follow us, or does it rotate? What bereavement support do you provide afterward, and for how long?

Ask them of two or three programs and the differences become obvious fast. A hospital discharge planner may hand you one name; you are not obligated to take the first one offered.

The Timing Problem, and When to Call

The most common regret we hear is not that a family chose hospice. It's that they waited. Nationally, a substantial share of hospice patients enroll within their final week — long past the point where the team could have built a relationship, managed symptoms properly, or given a caregiver a real break. Six months is the eligibility ceiling, not a target, and a person who stabilizes can be re-certified or can leave hospice and return later.

If you're reading this because a doctor used the word this week, the useful next step is small: ask for a hospice information visit, which is free and commits you to nothing. Ask what level of care they'd start with, what the residence would still charge, and who comes at 3 a.m. And if something about the care your parent receives — in any licensed setting — doesn't seem right, Ohio has formal channels for that.

Frequently Asked Questions