Planning Ahead - When Your Loved One Passes Away at Home


These are the Key Next Steps  When a Loved One Passes Away at Home
  1. Contact the hospice nurse assigned to your case, if you have one, or the police if you don't, so they can pronounce the death.
  2. If you already did a Cremstar Cost Calculator estimate and emailed it to yourself, click on the link in the email where it says Order Now.
  3. If you didn't already do an estimate, visit cremstar.com, and click on the Order Cremation button.
  4. Once you've completed Cremstar's online ordering forms and all of the next of kin have signed electronically, our funeral director will call you immediately to verify the information you provided and to give you an ETA for our drivers. Please be sure to have the hospice name and the hospice nurse's contact information available when the Funeral Director calls.
  5. Meantime, the hospice nurse or police will arrive and pronounce the death.
  6. The Cremstar mortuary transport professionals will arrive to perform the removal within two hours of the online forms being completed and the pronouncement being made. If you would like to spend a few hours with your loved one before we take them into our care, please make arrangements with our funeral director when he calls.
  7. Please remember to remove any personal items, such as jewelry, from your loved one before our drivers arrive.

Hospice Care
Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the mitigation (palliation) of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms, and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. It also provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be arduous, likely to cause more symptoms, or are not truly aligned with a person's goals.

Hospice care in the United States is largely defined by the practices of the Medicare system and other health insurance providers, which cover inpatient or at-home hospice care for patients with terminal diseases who are estimated to live six months or less.

Inpatient versus At-Home Hospice Care
Your loved one may either be in an inpatient hospice facility, with 24–7 monitoring, or they may be in at-home hospice, under the care of family and a visiting hospice nurse. Which is better for you is dependent on the condition of your loved one, as well as the support system available at home.

The number one misunderstanding about at-home palliative care is that professional hospice is around the clock, that the nurse is going to be there 24–7. Unfortunately, under the American medical system, insurance companies and hospice service providers don’t have the financial or staff resources to provide such extensive support to patients in their homes. Some families are well prepared, but it can be a heavy physical and emotional burden. If you overestimate your capabilities, both the patient and family may suffer.

Cremstar works with a number of Hospice organizations in the states in which we operate. These include Bayada and Samaritan in New Jersey, and Vitas and Serenity in Pennsylvania, among many others. Many of these organizations provide both inpatient and at-home hospice care.

If you are looking into hospice, or if your loved one is already under hospice care, make sure to visit our Forms & Kits page to download a Preparing for a Cremstar Cremation  kit, which features special Next Steps checklists for you (like the one above) and for the hospice nurse too.

Advance Directives and Living Wills
If you don't already have an Advance Directive in place– and about 40% of Americans ages 65 and older don't–make sure it's part of your planning. Advance directives often take the form of a living will, which defines the medical treatment that patients prefer if they are incapacitated, or designation of a certain person as a medical power of attorney. (NOTE: Be aware that for those with a traditional "power of attorney" over an individual, legal authority expires when that individual passes, and you are no longer entitled to make decisions as Authorizing Agent. If you wish to designate someone other than a traditional Next of Kin, download the relevant Designation of Agent form from our Forms & Kits page.)

Home Funerals
With a home funeral, family or friends take charge of caring for the body after death, either alone or with the help of a funeral professional. They might keep the deceased at home, wash and dress the body, and hold a vigil or ceremony. In most states, families have 24 hours after the death has occurred before a loved one must be removed from the home setting and placed within a refrigerated morgue. If you would like to spend a few hours with your loved one before we take them into our care, please make arrangements with our funeral director when he calls. For more information on home funerals, visit the Funeral Consumers Alliance website.

Funeral Consumers Alliance Logo


Key Hospice Facts
  • Nine out of ten people want to be kept at home if they become terminally ill, and yet over half of Americans are dying in a hospital or long-term care facility.
  • Only 20% of Americans die at home; the figure is the same in Australia, slightly higher in New Zealand (30%), and lower in South Korea and Japan (15%).
  • African Americans and Hispanics have advance directives at lower rates compared to whites, as do people with lower incomes and lower levels of completed education.
  • Of the 76.4 million Baby Boomers living in the United States, twenty percent do not have children to act as caregivers. In fact, nearly 50% of U.S. adults are single today.
  • In 2034, adults aged 65 and over will outnumber children aged 18 and younger for the first time in U.S. history.
  • The number of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase from 52 million in 2018 to 98 million by 2060. And yet, as the number of elderly people is increasing, the number of medical professionals is decreasing. The U.S. could see a shortage of 120,000 physicians and will need 12 million new nurses by 2030.
  • Of all Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2013, 47% used hospice–a rate that has more than doubled since 2000 (23%).
  • The rate of hospice use increases with age, with the highest rate existing among decedents ages 85 and over.
  • Hospice care accounts for about 10 percent of traditional Medicare spending in beneficiaries’ last year of life.

For more information on the Cremstar process, visit our How it Works section.
 
If you have any questions, please contact us:
  • By phone: (888) 802-0999, available 24/7. (Se Habla Español.)
  • By email: [email protected]
  • By chat: 7AM - 10PM Eastern Time, seven days a week; click on the round red chat button on the bottom right of the screen.

If you are in immediate need because a death has already occurred, order a direct cremation now. If a death is imminent (i.e. in a matter of days or weeks), visit the Cremstar Cremation Cost Calculator for a price quote and to email yourself a customized "Order Now" link so that you're ready when the death occurs. If you are preparing for the future, visit our Planning Ahead section.