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/.
Tej Dhillon, founder and CEO of Seva Hospice, has been named a 2024 Future Leader by Hospice News.
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.
Dhillon recently shared details about his career trajectory with Hospice News about the ways the industry is evolving.
What drew you to come to work in the hospice space?
I had a roundabout way of getting into hospice, as I wasn’t in the health care field at all. Initially, my father actually owned an assisted care facility, which he bought in 2006. The journey can be traced to 2006 when my father, looking into real estate investments, instead purchased an assisted care facility primarily because my grandmother had dementia. He really wanted to create an environment that he felt was suitable for his own mother, and shifted his sights to managing and renovating an assisted living facility.
At that same facility years later, a home health nurse came into the facility and convinced my parents to get into home health. After some consideration, in 2011 my parents did eventually go down the path of starting a home health company and I had joined them in that endeavor in the early stages. I have been immersed in health care ever since.
When I took the reins over the business, I had always wanted to get into hospice care for personal reasons and it also being a natural extension of our business. So in 2019 I launched a hospice company, which became Seva Hospice. The past five years, being immersed in hospice, I’ve come to really love this industry. It’s turned me into a huge advocate for hospice. I think it’s a beautiful service.
What would you say is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned since starting to work in hospice?
Compassion and empathy kind of go a long way. I have an amazing staff at Seva, and oftentimes they tell me it’s the little things that we do that make a world of difference for the patients we care for. Just being present for the family during this difficult time can provide immense comfort.
If you could change one thing with an eye towards the future of hospice, what would that be?
We need greater education about the hospice benefit at an earlier stage, whether that’s through palliative care or just understanding what hospice really means, and getting around the stigma of the word. The hospice benefit can provide so much for a patient at much earlier stages that when hospice is typically discussed. However, not enough providers and community partners recognize all of these benefits. There could be more education there.
Secondly, I really hope the bad actors get out of the industry. Being such a big hospice advocate, I do feel that there are these articles that are painting hospice in this bad light, which is really unfortunate for those of us that truly care.
What do you foresee looking ahead to say, 2025 What do you foresee as being different about the hospice industry?
Personally, I’m very interested in the AI space around health care. I’m curious to see how AI can infiltrate the health care landscape, whether that’s care plan coordination, whether that’s scheduling, just overall quality improvements or efficiency. How can we leverage technology to help with every aspect of health care? This is especially important, as there’s going to be an increased demand for hospice services.
A statistic I’ve seen is that all baby boomers will have turned 65 by 2030, so we have this large aging generation that’s going to be utilizing health care services, including home health and hospice care with rising workforce shortages.
My hope is that AI can help to ease the workforce challenge that’s faced around the country through efficiency. That’s something that I’m excited for.
In a word, how would you describe the future of hospice?
I would say “evolving.” We have these massive demographic shifts with the baby boomers. Almost all of them are now almost at the Medicare age.
With the advancement in technology that I just mentioned, public acceptance, there’s always new palliative care models that are being thrown out there. There’s new government models that they’re trying to look at, so I just think the industry is continuing to evolve.
If you could go back to your first day working in hospice and give yourself any piece of advice, what would it be?
The only constant is change. I’ve been in home health for 12 years, and I’ve been in hospice for five. Even if you just look at the past five years in hospice, you have this aging population. You have staff shortages. You have value-based care, and you don’t have value-based care, and then you have all these new government regulations and payment models. We had the pandemic. We have AI coming in.
The advice that I would give is to embrace change before you become overwhelmed by it.
The second part of that is — my father actually had a really good saying. He would say, “The patient comes first, and the dollar will follow.” If you do all of the right things, if you care for the patient and focus on the quality of care, you build that reputation in the community. That will propel your business forward.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
