Quick Answer
Nursing and palliative support fits a parent with a serious illness who wants to stay home while a palliative care team manages comfort and symptoms. Our nurse handles skilled needs like wound care and feeding tubes. Caregivers cover daily support in shifts of at least four hours. Each care plan starts with a free in-home consultation.
In-Home Palliative Care for the Hours Between Doctor Visits
Palliative care is medical care that helps adults ease symptoms like pain, fatigue, and shortness of breath, at any stage of the illness. For many families in the Twin Cities, it starts with visits from a palliative team, then the hours in between land on you. Your mom is home after chemo and too tired to cook. Your dad may need help getting cleaned after treatment. Written instructions are there, but you still need someone to help.
Dignified Choice Care provides nursing and palliative support that follows your parent’s care plan. We do not replace your parent's palliative team, and we are not a hospice provider. Our nurse handles skilled needs at home, while caregivers keep the daily routine steady between appointments. When there are any changes in your mom’s condition, the caregiver tells our nurse and your family.
Tell Us What Your Dad Needs Between Appointments
Let’s walk through a typical day with your dad and we will suggest a starting schedule for in-home care.
What Nursing and Palliative Support Covers at Home
Nursing and palliative support covers both skilled nursing visits for clinical needs and caregiver shifts for in-home support. The nurse handles tasks that need clinical training, such as wound care, feeding tube care, and medication management. Caregivers help with bathing, meals, medication reminders, errands, and company.
The palliative care remains with your parent's medical team. Your dad can keep getting treatments like chemotherapy or dialysis while receiving palliative care, according to the National Institute on Aging.
In-home nursing varies depending on the type of home care services your parent needs. Your mom might need a nurse visit for a slow-healing wound and caregiver visits at 20 hours a week. Your dad may need overnight caregivers when symptoms flare. A registered nurse builds a care plan that outlines that mix and updates the care plan as your parent's needs change.
What Changes When Comfort Care Comes Home
Daily help at home gives your parent time to rest without having you take care of meals and personal care in between appointments. Your dad can take a break after washing while a caregiver prepares his breakfast.
Palliative care at home also focuses on your parent’s comfort, alongside medical treatments. Your mom gets nursing visits and caregiver assistance right in the comfort of her living room. She sleeps in her own bed, follows her own routine, and lives among her own things. Wound care and medication setups happen at the kitchen table, instead of a clinic waiting room.
In-home palliative support means your dad continues daily life around treatment, while any changes are noticed and reported. A caregiver may see that your dad is eating less or struggling with hearing. Those observations go to the nurse for review and to your family as follow-up. You can call his palliative team with full detail of the symptom.
Let’s Sort Out Your Dad’s Nursing Needs and Daily Care
Tell us how your dad’s day goes after a doctor visit. We will help you sort out which tasks need a nurse and which need a caregiver.
When Do Families Bring In Nursing and Palliative Support?
In-home support helps when your parent’s care needs continue after an appointment ends. You notice changes in their symptoms, daily routine, or find that your family needs help carrying out his treatment plan.
- Your dad is living with a chronic illness: Heart failure, kidney disease, and cancer bring good weeks and hard ones. A steady caregiver helps your dad get through the hard weeks with support at home.
- You live too far away to check in: Living in another state or even across the metro, keeps you from seeing how your mom is doing day to day. A caregiver who supports her for hours, not minutes, can tell you.
- Your dad has dementia or Alzheimer's along with other illnesses: Pain is harder to read when your dad cannot describe it. His assigned caregivers get dementia care training specific to him, with gentle and familiar cues that help him remember.
- Your parent just came home from the hospital. Discharge papers outline what to watch for, but someone has to handle the instructions while taking care of your parent.
- You are the family caregiver, and you are worn out: Respite care is not giving up on your parent. It gives you time to take a break and still keep showing up.
If one of these sounds like your week, that is reason enough to talk it through. Nothing has to be decided on the first call.
Support That Fits Around Your Parent’s Treatment Plan
Nursing and palliative support fits around your parent's treatment plan and matches care to the days treatment can be hardest. On chemo or dialysis days, a caregiver can get your dad ready, be there when they get home, and keep the rest of the shift quiet.
Medication Setups and Reminders
A nurse sets up your parent's medication support plan and caregivers give reminders at the right times. If a side effect shows up during a new dose, the caregiver tells the nurse. Your parent’s medical team handles prescriptions and any dose changes.
Personal Care Services
Serious illness makes the basic activities tiring. Trained caregivers help your mom with showering, dressing, grooming, and toileting at her pace. How she likes things done goes into the personal care plan, so the personal care feels more like her routine, not a checklist.
Companion Care and Support
Palliative care often means more appointments. Caregivers can drive your dad to each one, pick up groceries and prescriptions, and cook what his diet and appetite can handle. Companion care also covers the long afternoons that family members cannot visit.
Overnight and 24 Hour Care
Breathlessness, pain, and restlessness often get worse at night. Overnight care puts a caregiver in the house while your mom sleeps. 24 Hour Home Care is also available to cover the full day in rotating shifts, so there is always someone to help when your dad needs steady support.
Support Alongside Hospice
If your parent moves from palliative care to hospice, our caregivers can keep their shifts. Your dad’s hospice team can send their own nurses for set visits, and we support the hours around them. Our End of Life Care page explains how that works.
Help After a Hospital or Rehab Stay
The first weeks after a procedure mean new medications, new wounds, and new limits. Our nurse can handle wound care and update your parent’s care plan accordingly. Our Transition Home / Post-Rehabilitation Support services support in-home care while your parent recovers.
Most families often combine two or three in-home services, based on the symptoms, family help in place, and when the hardest hours fall. Caregiver shifts run at least four hours. Skilled nursing visits are scheduled around your parent’s clinical needs.
What Shapes the Cost of Nursing Support at Home?
The cost of nursing and palliative support depends on how many hours your parent needs and how much of that calls for a nurse. Dignified Choice Care walks you through each factor so you can understand what in-home care services are involved and how much they cost.
- Weekly Caregiver Hours: Every shift runs at least four hours. More care hours needed in a week increase the total.
- Overnight and 24 Hour Coverage: Covering nights or rotating shifts in a full day adds hours quickly.
- Skilled Nursing Tasks: Clinical tasks like wound care or feeding tube management carry a nursing fee. We tell you what it is up front, before care starts.
- Medication Setups. A nurse's medication setup is billed at the standard hourly rate, rather than a separate nursing charge.
- Starting Care: A one-time setup fee applies. Ask us for the current amount when reviewing costs.
Call us or send a short form to set up the free in-home consultation. We accept private pay and long-term care insurance, depending on the client’s actual policy coverage.
Clinical Backgrounds Behind Your Parent’s Daily Care
Dignified Choice Care hires certified nursing assistants (CNAs), retired nurses, and physical therapists, which goes beyond what Minnesota requires of home care workers. A caregiver who has worked in clinical care knows what a change in your dad’s breathing means, and knows when to call the nurse. One with physical therapy experience knows how to help your dad stand and move safely when his treatment has left him weak for the day.
Every caregiver is also trained on your parent's own care plan, not on a general care checklist.
Care starts the same way for every family. It starts with a free in-home consultation, then a registered nurse visits to meet your dad and build his care plan. At the first shift, a nurse or trainer comes along and introduces the assigned caregiver in person, so your parent meets them with a familiar face in the room.
Dropped shifts get covered, not cancelled. When a caregiver cannot make a shift, a supervisor or client coordinator steps into the schedule and works it. Between January and late August 2026, we missed 6 of 8,516 scheduled shifts.
Families Share Their Experience With Nursing and Home Support
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“Dignified Choice Care provided in home care for my dad, who was on hospice. Their care provider, Chris, was awesome. Chris’ daily care routine helped keep my father comfortable when he was no longer mobile. We fully trusted Chris in our home. Chris even repaired mom’s vacuum cleaner one day while dad was sleeping.”
– Matt S., Verified Customer
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“Dignified Choice is absolutely wonderful. I would definitely recommend them and trust them to care for your loved ones. 10 out of 10. They were super when they cared for my dad!!!!!!!!!”
– Mary D., Verified Customer
Ready to Talk Through Your Mom’s Care Plan?
In-Home Nursing and Palliative Support Across the Metro
Dignified Choice Care provides in-home nursing and palliative support across the metro, with our home office in Burnsville. We work with families across the Twin Cities counties including Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, Scott, Carver, and Washington.
When Twin Cities winter keeps your parent indoors for weeks, a caregiver's regular shifts mean your dad is not going days without company or in-home help.
Palliative Care FAQs
Hospice vs Palliative Care: What Is the Difference?
Hospice care supports the final stage of an illness, after treatment for a cure has stopped. Palliative care can begin at any stage and runs alongside treatment aimed at a cure. Dignified Choice Care provides trained caregivers that work alongside your parent’s palliative care or hospice team, covering the hours in between their visits.
How Can I Estimate the Weekly Cost Before Committing?
You can estimate weekly costs by requesting separate caregiver and nursing charges based on your parent’s proposed schedule. Ask for an estimate that outlines the hourly rate, planned caregiver hours, nursing visit charges, and one-time setup fee. If you use long-term care insurance, check your parent’s policy benefits before calculating what you would pay.
Do You Offer Private Duty Nursing?
No, our nurse visits for skilled needs like wound care, feeding tubes, and medication setups, but does not cover full shifts. Trained caregivers cover the longer home care shifts, following your parent’s care plan. For many families, that mix of in-home care already covers what they first assumed would take private duty nursing.
Does Medicare Pay for Nursing and Palliative Support at Home?
No. Dignified Choice Care does not accept Medicare or Medicaid. We accept private pay and long-term care insurance. Your parent's palliative team bills separately for its own doctor and nurse visits, so ask them what their coverage includes. Our hourly rate covers the caregiver and nursing hours in your parent's care plan.
How Soon Can Palliative Support Start?
Care usually starts once a nurse has visited your parent, discussed their care needs, and has built a plan that follows your parent’s treatment and pace. If your parent is coming home from the hospital, tell us the discharge date and we will plan the first visit around it.
Get a Care Plan Built Around Your Parent's Comfort
Call us or send a short message through our contact form. We will talk through how your parent's days go and what the palliative team requires. A registered nurse will visit to write the care plan the caregivers will follow.
Our phone line is answered 24/7. Your family will have a clear starting point for nursing tasks, daily assistance, and scheduled hours.