Health care organizations in the Triangle have difficulty providing hospice care for terminally ill children. End-of-life care models for children are limited in the Raleigh-Durham area.
But a new program starting in September at Transitions LifeCare will provide hospice care for 10 terminally ill children at a time.
Darcy Dye Bowers, spokeswoman for Transitions LifeCare, said providing services can be hard because the providers have to rely on outside funding to pay for pediatric hospice. Medicare covers hospice services for most adult patients.
"It's very hard to think of a child dying, so there's a counseling element that's different for children than there is for adults. Not that adults don't need that and their loved ones don't need that as well, but for children, it's kind of at a whole different level," Bowers said.
Transitions LifeCare currently provides services for about 500 adults in the Triangle.