The Colorado Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) recently updated both its mission statement and logo to reflect the organization’s increased integration of hospice, palliative and bereavement into its service line. This move comes as the provider completes the integration of Halcyon Hospice & Palliative Care, which ceased operations in August 2020 and was absorbed into Colorado VNA.

Since then, the Colorado VNA has been continuously working to make the public aware of the full continuum of care they offer. The new branding is designed to emphasize care, quality and comfort.

“We’ve all been working as one organization,” said Colorado VNA President Julie Nunley in an announcement. “Now, we are working under one mission and logo, too — the Colorado Visiting Nurse Association.”

Arvada-headquartered Colorado VNA is a community-based provider that offers home health and wellness care services throughout the Denver metro area, Colorado Springs and parts of greater El Paso and Teller counties. The organization’s hospice and palliative care services are offered across Denver and neighboring Larimer and Weld counties.

The aging population in Colorado is expected to double in the coming decades, leading to rising demand for serious and terminal illness care. Currently, seniors 65 and older represent 16.5% of the state’s overall population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of adults in this age group will bulk up to 1.7 million by 2050, or 1 in 5 Coloradoans, a rise from 1 in 7 in 2019, reported the Colorado Health Institute.

Hospice utilization among Medicare decedents reached 53.2% during 2018, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. This rose above the national average of 50.3% that year.

Addressing the health care, socio-economic and nonmedical needs of an aging population has been among the factors increasingly bringing providers together. The need to improve coordination across the care continuum is motivating hospices to diversify services and engage patients further upstream in the course of their illnesses.

Completing the inclusion of Halcyon with a revised mission statement and logo is part of a growing trend in hospice care as providers diversify their services to better assist patients, as well as change the general perception of hospice care.

Prior to joining forces, the two providers shared an administrative office space. The Halcyon Corp. discontinued operations during 2020, indicating that most of its staff would become Colorado VNA employees.

Each were affiliates of the Care Synergy network. The cooperative is made up of hospice, home health and palliative organizations that each operate as its own distinct and independent entity, but share a pool of services such as accounting, payroll, revenue cycle and treasury management, information technology (IT), human resources, compliance, education, and marketing and communications, among other aspects of business.

The move with Halcyon strengthened Colorado VNA overall and expanded its continuum of care and service area reach while also benefiting patients, staff and referral sources alike, according to Care Synergy CEO Tim Bowen.

Collaborations such as Care Synergy are proliferating the hospice industry as groups of nonprofit providers increasingly form collaborative networks to support, sustain and grow their services. 

The combined collaborative allows the providers to not only pool their operational resources, but also grow and sustain their financial and staffing opportunities, Bowen previously told Hospice News.