Empath Health’s Sanders: Value-Based Care to Spur Hospice Growth

Rhonda Sanders was named Chief Mission Access Officer of Empath Health this week, where she will be spearheading growth initiatives in terms of patient population, payor relationships and referral sources across each of the organization’s business lines. Hospice News sat down with Sanders to talk about the hospice and palliative care growth opportunities she expects to see in the coming year, including value-based care programs.

Sanders is among the new echelon of Empath Health’s executive leadership following last year’s merger with Stratum Health. The two Florida-based companies joined forces last February, with the combined organization retaining the Empath Health brand. The enterprise is the parent company of Suncoast Hospice and Tidewell Hospice, both in Florida.

Empath Health’s network provides hospice, palliative and home health care to more than 12,000 patients daily across the Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida regions. The merged enterprise’s scope of services also includes private duty, physician services, palliative care, home-based primary care, a Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) program and an HIV medical clinic. Empath employs approximately 2,000 employees with as many as 2,500 volunteers.

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What brought you to seek a career in the hospice space?

Hospice is very near and dear to my heart. I started my health care career after college with a Clearwater-based company [in Florida]. I was in respiratory care and was an area leader for Texas and New Mexico. I had been there seven years, and we went through a personal experience with hospice care.

My father went through caregiver breakdown. He was the primary caregiver for our family member, and it was really not a good hospice experience.My family member passed in immense pain, and they were giving him oral medications when he could no longer swallow. It was very impactful for my family, especially my dad.

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I was very involved in that process, because I was the family member who was in health care. I was helping navigate through our hospice journey with this particular company and was just very displeased with the lack of empathy that this company exhibited. I thought to myself that although I was very happy at my current employer, I never want another family to go through what we went through. So I started seeking out opportunities to be involved with hospice.

A gentleman by the name of Chris Gerard, who owned IntegraCare Home Health in Texas, gave me the opportunity to lead their hospice sales division. I worked with them for several years, and [IntegraCare] was Kindred at Home’s first acquisition.

I was very involved with hospice for many years, and then my career took a turn and I became involved with home health care. But for over 15 years, I’ve been involved with both hospice and home health care.

What do you see as the most significant growth opportunities for Empath’s hospice and palliative businesses in 2022?

I believe access is our biggest opportunity. Obviously, we’ve seen growth in terms of access and patients receiving the hospice benefit. But though we’ve seen huge strides over the course of the last few years, we’re not there yet. With the Medicare Advantage hospice carve-in, the [value-based insurance design (VBID) demonstration] coming into play, that’s only going to enable us to be able to touch more people through the hospice benefit. I really am excited about our continuum of care here at Empath and being able to provide access to more patients.

How would you characterize Empath’s growth trajectory to date following its merger with Stratum?

Although I’ve been here just a short time, I feel like we have very aggressive growth projections. We’ve been able to grow in all service lines post-merger. That’s been very pleasing to see. It’s very early on in the process, but the future’s looking bright for all levels of care.

What would you say are the most important factors driving growth in the hospice and palliative care arena and 2021 and then looking forward to next year?

I mentioned VBID and also value-based care overall. Here at Empath Health, we actually have the ability to provide a patient with full access to a continuum of care, from our home health benefit to hospice and palliative care along with our medical services. I think value based care is the future. It’s our growth opportunity, because many out there are not providing that full continuum, which I think is so immensely important in health care today. That’s where we’re going to see the most growth.

What are you seeing in terms of headwinds that could threaten or limit growth in the space?

For health care in general, labor shortages would probably be that headwind that’s impacting us the most as an industry. I don’t foresee that getting better. With the aging Baby Boomer population and a shortage of health care workers, we’re going to have to be very aggressive with recruiting.

We’re going to have to think outside the box in terms of recruiting efforts, and we’re already doing that at Empath Health. We’ve been early adopters of that outside-the-box thinking in terms of recruiting, but it also really boils down to retention.

Culture drives retention, and one of the things that I’ve seen at Empath is just the employees’ true dedication to the mission. That definitely comes through. It came through in the interview process, and in my short time here, and I think that will be a differentiator for us.

How is Empath adapting to the changing health care environment?

In terms of adapting to change, it’s the things that we’ve done through the merger process. We have expanded hospice services and then home health care is expanding as well. We’ve seen expansion not only from a geographical standpoint, but from a service line standpoint to truly give that patient and family full access to the right care at the right time, and helping them navigate that through all of those levels of care.

You’ve spoken about value-based care. Can you say more about the growth opportunities that you see in Medicare Advantage and direct contracting. Is Empath pursuing any of those programs?

We are pursuing direct contracting entities. We feel like it’s very important in health care today. In terms of the carve-in, the key is really that collaboration between the payors and providers. While we’ve been able to navigate value-based care in the home health arena for some time, this is new to hospice. It requires us to work closely with our payor partners, and we’ll definitely see ebbs and flows and changes as we go forward.

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