Hospice of Medina County Re-Opens Inpatient Unit Closed Due to Pandemic

Ohio-based HMC Hospice of Medina County, an affiliate of Hospice of the Western Reserve, will re-open its inpatient facility effective Jan 17. The unit had closed in June 2020 due to concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The closure took place amid other cost-cutting and safety-related measures as the hospice contended with the scarcity and rising costs of supplies, limited access to nursing home- and senior living-bound patients and associated drops in daily census and referrals.

The closure included some staff reductions, but with the forthcoming reopening Medina County has been able to hire back most of those employees, Hospice of the Western Reserve President and CEO William Finn told Hospice News.

“Omicron is very real for us, so we are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. But the way our health systems are responding to COVID is fundamentally different than it was a year and a half ago; the environment is different,” Finn said. “We’re seeing more triggers that can create a need for a hospice referral. We’re also seeing our nursing homes have improved visitation and higher occupancy than they did a year and a half ago.”

The Hospice of Medina County and the Hospice of Western Reserve merged in 2015, and the combined organization continues to offer services under both brands. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Hospice of the Western Reserve serves 1,200 patients daily across nine counties throughout the state’s northern region, providing palliative care and hospice to adult and pediatric patients. The nonprofit is a subsidiary of Western Reserve Care Solutions.

Ohio in 2018 ranked sixth nationwide in hospice utilization with 56.7% of Medicare decedents electing the benefit, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization. Utah held the highest utilization rate at 60.5%.

The Medina County inpatient building was fairly new and in good shape at the time of the temporary closure, but the hospice provider did do some retrofitting of the facility, including integrating new air handling technology to support infection control, according to Finn.

While some hospice programs in the United States have had to close or consolidate their inpatient units as a result of labor pressures facing the industry, Finn told Hospice News that Medina County was able to bring back staff that had been laid off or who had been transferred to the organizations’ other facilities. One area where they did see pressures was among dietary services staff. 

“We had to get very creative in terms of how we were going to provide dietary services,” Finn said. “Some of it had to do with flexibility in work hours. Some of it had to do with creating flexibility within job roles. We’re looking at how we can have more people on hand to help assure that all the functions of the building run smoothly.”