In February 2023, former President Jimmy Carter, then 98, announced that he would forgo further medical procedures and instead spend the rest of his time in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia. Carter had been hospitalized briefly in recent years for a variety of health reasons, including liver surgery and cancer.

Tributes began pouring in then, as it seemed the former politician was entering his final days. But nearly a year and a half later, Carter – who turns 100 in October – has exceeded expectations and hopes to vote for Kamala Harris this fall, his family said.

“Hospice patients often wish to live long enough to experience milestone birthdays or family events,” Angela Novas, chief medical officer of the Hospice Foundation of America, who is not involved in Carter’s care, tells Yahoo Life, “and hospice care will do everything in its power to make sure you are there for those milestones.”

Carter’s persistence sheds a new and perhaps more optimistic light on hospice care – a phase of end-of-life care that many experts say is often misunderstood. Here’s what you need to know.

What is hospice care?

When Carter first entered hospice care, Yahoo Life spoke with Dr. Sunita Puri, program director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship program at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and author of This good night: life and medicine in the eleventh hour. She said she likes to think of hospice care as “intensive, wellness-focused care” that is “delivered with the goal of minimizing the physical, emotional and spiritual suffering that patients and their families experience when someone has six months or less to live.”

Hospice care is mostly provided at home, but can also be provided in a nursing home or an independent hospice facility.

How long does a hospice stay usually last?

Dr. Phillip Rodgers, a palliative care specialist and chief of the University of Michigan’s Division of Family Medicine, tells Yahoo Life that while hospice care is available for at least the last six months of a person’s life, most people stay in hospice care for much shorter periods of time. According to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the average length of stay in hospice is 18 days, and 75% of hospice recipients receive fewer than 90 days—stays are even shorter for people from Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.

“There are some people – like President Carter – who have been in hospice for much longer, but their numbers are small,” says Rodgers.

Carter’s wife, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, spent only a few days in hospice care before she died in November 2023.

However, Dr. Kathleen Unroe, a scientist at the Indiana University Center for Aging Research, points out that 10% of people are in hospice for more than 264 days.

And Novas says that while Carter’s stay at hospice is longer than that of a typical hospice patient, his length of stay is not unprecedented.

“Hospice eligibility requirements based on Medicare hospice benefits require a prognosis of six months or less — that is, doctors must believe you will die within six months if your disease progresses as expected. But no one can predict that with 100 percent certainty,” she says. “If hospice patients survive their initial six-month hospice benefit period, they can continue to receive care as long as the hospice medical team determines that eligibility requirements are met.”

Dr. R. Sean Morrison, chairman of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, tells Yahoo Life that one reason hospice stays are often shorter is because people have a hard time accepting that it’s time for the next phase of care.

“People are afraid of hospices and what that means – that when you go into hospice, you realize you’re dying,” he says. “And that can be very, very difficult for both patients and doctors.”

What people misunderstand about hospice care

According to experts, in addition to the length of stay, there are also many misunderstandings regarding hospice care.

• Myth 1: Hospices are for people who have “given up.” A major misconception people have about hospice care, according to end-of-life care professionals, is that people have “given up” on their own care or the care of their loved ones. “In fact, hospice care is very often the opposite and actually increases the care and support available, especially for patients living at home or in home-like settings such as assisted living,” Rodgers says.

• Myth #2: Hospice care is for people who only have a few days left to live. As Carter shows, patients may have weeks or months to live.

• Myth 3: Hospice care includes round-the-clock care by medical professionals at the bedside. In fact, “the majority of day-to-day caregiving responsibilities fall to the family (or) private caregivers or nursing home staff,” Novas explains. Morrison adds that one of the biggest misconceptions he hears is that hospice is a place, not a form of care. “(People think) that when they go to hospice, they’re going to a building to die. And the reality is that overwhelmingly, by law, 80% of hospice care has to be provided at home,” he says.

• Myth 4: A stay in a hospice accelerates the dying process. Hospice care is not about life-prolonging therapies or aggressive treatments, but “the hospice philosophy is to provide comfort and compassionate care to terminally ill people, however long that may take,” Novas says.

• Myth 5: Hospices are only for cancer patients. Novas says hospice care is intended for people “with a wide range of diagnoses.”

Novas adds that Carter’s public confession about beginning hospice care sparked conversations about end-of-life care and helped dispel some of the persistent myths.

“As a nation, we saw him attend his wife Rosalynn’s funeral and other events while also receiving hospice care,” Novas says. “Mr. Carter played a huge role in dispelling the myth that hospice is only for people whose death is imminent. What he did to raise awareness about hospice care will no doubt be part of his legacy.”