The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with Homecare Homebase. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of home health, hospice care, senior housing, skilled nursing, and behavioral health. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Lindsay Nixon, administrator at Arbor Hospice, has been named a 2024 Future Leader by Hospice News. Nixon is transitioning to a new role as assistant vice president of strategic projects of NorthStar Care Community.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Nixon recently shared details about her career trajectory with Hospice News about the ways the industry is evolving due to technology trends and a focus on value-based care delivery alongside rising demand.
What drew you to the hospice industry?
My first job as a nurse was in a nursing home in a secured dementia unit. I was drawn to the way that the hospice team addressed multiple aspects of health. Care of the whole person — mind, body and spirit — was what pulled me to nursing originally. It didn’t take long to realize that hospice nursing aligned well with that approach.
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
I think the most impactful lesson I have learned over the last 10 years is seeing how similar we all are as human beings.
Watching people from different ethnicities, cultures and economic positions has opened my eyes to see how similar we are as people, and that no matter how different we may feel from one another there are so many similarities at the end of our journey.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of hospice, what would it be?
If I could change anything, I would change our feedback system. Mailed surveys are archaic, delayed and aren’t capturing a valid data set.
Attempting to measure and report on the quality of our care and service with our current systems is not giving us valuable or useful information — and that is what we are publicly showing our consumers!
What do you foresee as being different about the hospice industry looking ahead to 2025?
I see value-based care continuing to move forward with more venture-backed adjacent companies working to pull health care into the technological age.
I think hospices have been reluctant to admit that the industry needs to shift in this direction, so I am
anticipating more people will begin coming around to the idea that value-based care is here to stay. Time to adjust the sails!
In a word, how would you describe the future of hospice?
Strong.
The end-of-life care that we have branded under the term “hospice” is something that has been around for centuries. As we see priority towards value-based care, I think the interdisciplinary approach that hospice provides will be an asset to any upstream partner that is interested in adopting it, no matter what they decide to call it.
What quality must all Future Leaders possess?
The ability to reflect without bias. If you are only looking in one direction, you’re missing out on important opportunities to look at cause and effect that your decisions have made.
If you are guarding your past decisions with bias towards righteousness, you’ll be blinded to growth.
If you could give advice to yourself looking back to your first day in the industry, what would it be and why?
I would tell myself that this path was going to completely change my life, but not in the way I would have expected. Making a living out of providing quality hospice care has given me perspective in how I live, how I interact with my friends, family and community, and the level of compassion I have for others.
About three months into my first hospice role as a case manager I remember telling my dad that there is no other job in the world that provides so many opportunities for gratitude within an eight-hour shift. Every single day, I’m reminded of all of the things I get to go home at night and be grateful for.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
