The Maryland-based nonprofit Hospice of the Chesapeake is expanding its dementia caregiver education program into a new county.
Patients in Charles County, Maryland, will now have access to the services, with caregiver support as a primary focus in the first phase. Families will be able to participate in the hospice’s Caregiver Academy program, which offers education on patients’ conditions and how to care for them in the home.
This will be part of a larger push to enhance dementia care that is taking shape in the organization, with future components to be announced, according to Joshua Magariel, director of service excellence and community health at Hospice of the Chesapeake.
“Dementia is one of these diagnoses that we know has such an overwhelming impact on patients, their family caregivers and loved ones. It’s an extraordinary burden,” Magariel told Hospice News. “We don’t believe that anybody who’s caring for that patient should be left behind. Most people caring for someone with dementia at home have no clinical training, and they’re learning to care in a state of crisis. We want to try to remove that crisis as much as possible.”
The Caregiver Academy has multiple components, Magariel said. It includes support groups, virtual education and hands-on immersive training in simulation labs. The academy will now be available across the Hospice of the Chesapeake service area, including Charles County
Hospice of the Chesapeake provides hospice and palliative care across four Maryland counties. The Charles County Charitable Trust is supporting the dementia care expansion through a $46,270 grant.
The grant dollars will serve the hospice on several fronts.
“We want to make sure that all of our professional caregivers that are supporting family caregivers have their own advanced training. Another is to ensure that our simulation labs have all have the right resources,” Magariel said. “It includes the time for planning and ensuring that every touch point that we have is based on evidence-based practices.”
Hospice of the Chesapeake participates in the Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) payment model demonstration by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
The eight-year value-based care payment demonstration has seen widening participation among several hospice and palliative care providers nationwide. Participants in the capitated payment model receive a fixed monthly payment for each patient.
The nonprofit’s Caregiver Academy and dementia care services are available to patients enrolled in GUIDE, as well as those who are not.
“Our counties that we serve are among the highest concentrations of dementia patients in the state of Maryland. There’s definitely an increased focus in the state of Maryland for what they call the longevity ecosystem,” Magariel said. “We’re really responding to a lot of evidence of the increased demand. We really believe that our role is to support healthy aging in place and care for people in the community.”
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