Hospices Face Challenges in Determining Unrelated Conditions

Hospices often encounter difficulties when it comes to documenting which services are directly related to the patient’s terminal diagnosis as opposed to a comorbidity. Strategies for hospice providers to completing complete and accurate documentation include close examination of a patient’s health history and maintaining detailed records of patient care plans and medications needs. “It is […]

Hospices Increasingly Supplement Bereavement Care with Phone Apps

Hospices are embracing digital memory sharing platforms that are emerging worldwide to help support patients and their families through the dying process. These evolving technologies have made it possible for families and friends to memorialize loved ones through videos, audio recordings and various other media forms. Hospices are required by the U.S. Centers for Medicare […]

Hospices Seek to Balance Technology with the Human Touch

Hospices nationwide have leveraged technological advances to improve workflows, referral communications and enhance patient care. While telehealth in particular has been vital for hospices to continue reaching vulnerable high-risk patient populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, providers must proceed with caution when it comes to technology and patient care.  Prior to the pandemic, technology in the […]

Gary Winzelberg: Education Key to Hospice and Palliative Workforce Shortages

Gary Winzelberg, M.D., is director of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill’s Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program and associate professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine of the UNC School of Medicine. Board certified in hospice and palliative, geriatric and internal medicine, his teaching focuses on improving providers’ serious illness communication […]

Hospices Leverage Palliative Services in VBID Arena

Hospice providers are increasingly expanding palliative services as a bridge to end-of-life care and engage patients further upstream. With the forthcoming value-based insurance design (VBID) demonstration, hospices that have robust palliative care business lines will have a leg up on competitors in demonstrating their value to participating insurance plans. Many hospice providers see palliative care […]

Amedisys Expanding Palliative Care Operations

Amedisys Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) has continued to grow its hospice segment despite facing COVID-19 headwinds earlier this year. This expansion deepens an industry-wide trend toward service diversification and a lean towards value-based programming. The company is citing rising demand for palliative care as an impetus for moving into that space. “Palliative care is a nice […]

EHRs Help Providers Demonstrate Value-Based Hospice and Palliative Care

Electronic health record (EHR) systems are increasingly being tailored specifically to providers of end-of-life and seriously ill care as these industries move toward value-based care in the coming year ahead. Many hospice and palliative care providers have ramped up efforts to integrate electronic systems to stay competitive in a crowded marketplace and provide data-backed reporting […]

Hospices Seek to Maximize Employee Satisfaction Amid Pandemic Turnover

Amid industry-wide staffing shortages, hospices are progressively focusing on strategies to reduce turnover and improve employee satisfaction. Recent research indicates that providers can do more to support hospice staff work/life balance needs and boost morale to mitigate burnout and grow their workforce as they contend with added pressures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Staffing issues […]

Alive Hospice Doubles Telemedicine Presence

Nashville-based Alive Hospice expanded the scale of its telemedicine programming as tornadoes and the coronavirus pandemic took the area by storm this spring. Technology has become an essential tool for many providers to continue caring for hospice patient populations at highest risk of coronavirus infection. Alive Hospice launched the Henry Hooker Alive Connect telehospice program […]

Hospices Seek to Bridge Racial Divides in Access to Care

Hospice providers are increasingly strategizing to improve access to end-of-life care among historically underserved populations in African American, Hispanic and Native American communities. With ongoing civil unrest nationwide bringing racial inequity issues to the forefront in health care, many providers have worked to better understand the underlying issues for these disparities and demonstrate the value […]