Hospice Care offered through Gundersen Palmer Lutheran provides trained volunteers, as well as, counseling, 24 hour on call nursing, social services, chaplains, and personal care professionals to help provide care for a terminally ill person in their home during the last 6 months of the patient's life. Coordination of needed home health care services including: pharmacy, dietary, physical, respiratory, speech, and occupational therapies, and the needed home medical equipment. Inpatient hospice care available at several area nursing homes and hospitals.

Winneshiek Medical Center provides hospice services to people with terminal illness and their families to help maintain the best quality of life possible. Hospice care is provided wherever the person resides, whether it is in their own home, a long-term care facility or the hospital. Patients routinely receive in-home services from an interdisciplinary hospice team including a medical director, nurses, homemaker/health aides, social workers, spiritual advisors, pharmacists, and volunteers. Nursing home residents may receive hospice care as well. The team will work individually with dying person and family members to meet whatever needs arise. Hospice Care provides continued support before and after death (bereavement support for family members). A 21-hour training session is provided for volunteers/support staff (usually held once per year) to provide education on grieving and caregiving. Volunteers are utilized in the following areas: direct patient contact, fundraising, office work, publicity activities.

Hospice provides a philosophy that the quality of life is as important as the length of life. Services include care in patient’s home or in a home-like setting; pain control and comfort measures; physical, emotional, spiritual and social support; and support for family members.

MercyOne Elkader Medical Center offers in-home hospice care and out-of-home respite care services for hospice patients and their families. Out-of-home respite care services are also offered for any individual needing 24-hour care supervision. Short-term and long-term respite care services are available.

Hospice Care offered through Gundersen Palmer Lutheran provides trained volunteers, as well as, counseling, 24 hour on call nursing, social services, chaplains, and personal care professionals to help provide care for a terminally ill person in their home during the last 6 months of the patient's life. Coordination of needed home health care services including: pharmacy, dietary, physical, respiratory, speech, and occupational therapies, and the needed home medical equipment. Inpatient hospice care available at several area nursing homes and hospitals.