Indiana-based Stillwater Hospice recently completed a rural palliative care pilot that the nonprofit plans to extend into a long-term program.
The program’s roots were planted in October 2025. It emerged from a collaboration with Cameron Health, a community hospital in Angola, Indiana. The hospital was seeking to reduce its readmissions and saw palliative care as a potential solution. The initiative became an extension of Stillwater’s larger palliative care program.
Stillwater launched the pilot in Steuben County, Indiana, due to unmet needs in those communities.
“This is the first we’ve done palliative care in close partnership with the hospital to try to help with some of their metrics, and then also to be able to help with their patients,” Leslie Friedel, CEO of Stillwater Hospice, told Palliative Care News. “What they found in Steuben County specifically is that there are not as many resources available since it is a more rural county, and then also social isolation, and then just some of the healthcare literacy and access to healthcare.”
Stillwater Hospice serves 1,423 hospice patients annually, as well as 1,039 palliative care patients, across 13 Indiana counties.
The company has received close to 50 referrals to its palliative program with Cameron Health.
Through the program, seriously ill patients who have been recently discharged from Cameron have access to a nurse practitioner for symptom management, patient and family education and goals-of-care conversations. Patients receive a phone call within three days of discharge and a visit within a week, according to Cassandra Rosene, director of business development for Stillwater. Rosene leads the palliative care program.
The nurse practitioner educates patients and families about the specifics of their diseases, medication and other aspects of their conditions and their care. To date, the program has a 47% conversion rate to hospice, Rosene said. The program has also led to a significant reduction in hospitalizations among its patient population.
The hospice is financing the program by billing fee-for-service Medicare.
Stillwater is seeking grants to expand the program.
“We’re hoping to grow the program and add a certified community healthcare worker to really support those social needs with our nurse practitioner,” Rosene told Palliative Care News. “So being able to provide both that clinical and social aspect, because in the home [the practitioner] sees a very different patient than what they see at the hospital. She gets to see their living environment. She gets to see their challenges.”
