Hospice of Southwest Michigan has rebranded as Centrica Care Navigators to reflect its growing scope of services. Established 40 years ago solely as a hospice, the organization now provides palliative care and adult day care.

A rising number of hospices have undergone name changes in recent years. The impetus is often a wish to highlight upstream health care and in part to avoid the word “hospice” in their company names, hoping to ameliorate patients’ anxiety about end-of-life care.

“As a nonprofit, we always want to be really good stewards to the funds and fundraising that our community provides for us,” Centrica’s Chief Marketing & Development Officer Denise Kin told local TV news outlet Fox 17. “Having this umbrella brand, it helps us to not only market no matter what service line we are talking about; it’s clearly connecting the dots.”

Many in the hospice industry see service diversification as a business imperative to ensuring that hospices, particularly smaller community-based organizations, remain financially viable in order to support their missions.

New avenues of reimbursement are driving service diversification throughout much of the industry, with hospices launching programs like palliative care, PACE, home health and others. This will continue to be a major trend during 2022.

Amid these changes, demand for a range of home-based health care services is rising, a trend that has been building for years but accelerated when the pandemic hit. Patients and families have been less likely to seek institutional care due to fears of contracting the virus.

The need to improve coordination across the care continuum is also motivating hospices to diversify. An upstream service allows the provider to establish a relationship with the patient earlier in their illness trajectory, leading to smoother care transitions when the time comes for them to enter hospice.

With its additional services, the newly christened Centrica will have more opportunities to engage with the rising number of seriously ill seniors.

Demographic tailwinds run strong in Michigan where 26% of the population is 60 or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Michigan had the 10th highest rate of hospice utilization among Medicare decedents during 2018 at 53.8%, according to the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization. The national average that year was 50.3%. Utah led the nation with 60.5%.

“We’ve established a long legacy of innovating to provide a better, more comprehensive circle of care for you and your family,” Centrica indicated in a statement. “During our 40-plus years of caring for our community, we’ve continually expanded our services and reach to serve more of our neighbors at different points in their care journey.”