When you refer a patient to hospice, your job isn’t finished at the referral. The way you frame those first few days often determines whether a family walks into hospice feeling supported or feeling like something was sprung on them. Knowing exactly what happens in the first 72 hours lets you set accurate expectations before the hospice team ever walks through the door, which means fewer surprised phone calls back to your office and a smoother transition for everyone involved.

Here’s what your patients and their families can expect once hospice care begins, so you can prepare them for it in advance.

Hour One: The Admission Visit

Once a family accepts hospice care, an admission nurse typically visits within hours, often the same day for patients with urgent symptom needs. This visit covers:

• A full clinical assessment, including current symptoms, medications, and functional status
• Review and signing of the hospice election statement, which formally starts Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance coverage
• Medication reconciliation, where the nurse identifies which medications continue, which are discontinued, and which new comfort medications are added
• An overview of what hospice is and isn’t, since many patients and families still associate the word with “giving up” rather than a shift toward comfort-focused care

This is also the point where families are introduced to the interdisciplinary team model. It’s worth telling patients ahead of time that they’ll be meeting more than just a nurse: a social worker, chaplain, and CNA will typically follow within the first day or two, each with a distinct role in the plan of care.

Day One: Equipment and the Comfort Kit

Durable medical equipment, hospital beds, wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, and bedside commodes are usually delivered within 24 hours of admission. Alongside equipment, most hospice providers deliver an emergency comfort kit: a small set of medications kept in the home for symptom flares like pain, anxiety, or nausea, so the family isn’t waiting on a pharmacy run during a crisis at 2 a.m.

This is an important detail to walk patients through in advance. Families sometimes feel alarmed seeing medications like morphine arrive in the home before they’re needed. Explaining that the kit exists for rapid symptom control, not because death is imminent, prevents a lot of unnecessary anxiety in those first hours.

Days One Through Three: Building the Care Rhythm

Over the following 48 hours, the rest of the care team makes contact:

• The social worker assesses the family’s practical and emotional needs, connects them with community resources, and begins conversations around caregiver support.
• The chaplain offers spiritual support aligned with the patient’s own beliefs, or simply a listening presence if the family prefers no religious framing at all.
• The CNA begins a regular schedule of personal care visits, bathing, grooming, and comfort measures that make up much of what physical support and symptom management looks like day to day.
• The nurse typically returns within this window to reassess symptoms and adjust the plan of care based on how the patient is responding.

By the end of 72 hours, most families have met the full core team and have a working understanding of the schedule: how often each discipline visits, what routine home care looks like, and how to reach the on-call line after hours.

What Families Commonly Misunderstand at This Stage

A few misconceptions tend to surface in the first 72 hours, and preparing patients for them ahead of referral goes a long way:

• “Electing hospice means giving up.” Framing hospice as a shift toward comfort and quality of life, rather than an ending of care, changes how families receive the referral in the first place.
• “We can’t call 911 anymore.” Families sometimes aren’t sure how emergencies work under hospice. It’s worth letting them know the hospice team is reachable 24/7 for symptom crises, and that our post on how hospice handles a medical emergency at home walks through exactly when to call hospice versus 911.
• “This is permanent.” Patients can revoke hospice at any point and resume curative treatment if their situation changes, and they can re-elect later without penalty. Many families find this reassuring when they’re on the fence about starting.
• “We don’t know what to expect in the final days.” While that’s further down the road than the first 72 hours, families often ask about it early. Our guide on what happens in the last 72 hours of life is a resource you can point patients to once the conversation naturally moves there.

Why the First 72 Hours Matter for Your Referral Relationship

Patients and families who understand what’s coming tend to have a smoother admission and fewer distress calls back to your office in that first week. When you set expectations clearly before the referral, whether during a discharge planning conversation, a case management visit, or a physician consultation, families arrive at day one already oriented instead of caught off guard by equipment deliveries and unfamiliar faces.

Learn more: Medicare-covered hospice services in Georgia and our Who Pays for Hospice 

Partner With Golden Rule Hospice

Our team serves patients across Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and other counties throughout the Atlanta and Alpharetta area, and we’re glad to walk your team through our admission process, response times, and what your patients can expect at every stage Reach out to schedule a conversation or call us at (470) 395-6567 to coordinate a referral for a patient who may benefit from hospice care now.