Illinois-headquartered Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care is growing with the establishment of a new inpatient hospice unit on the 8th floor of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Fla. The hospice and the hospital redesigned the former acute care space to create a more serene environment conducive to end-of-life care. Most hospice care is provided in […]
Category: Operations
As more of the U.S. health care system migrates towards value-based care, efforts on the part of payers and other stakeholders to promote advance care planning could lead to increased hospice utilization as well as earlier admission of prospective patients. Advance care planning is designed to identify patients’ wishes, goals, and desires for their care […]
An increasing number of hospice providers are incorporating virtual reality (VR) technology into their staff training. Hospice of Southern Maine is one of those organizations. In 2018, they were approached by Embodied Labs, one of the leading vendors of this technology in the health care space. The idea was to collaborate on a new VR […]
Palliative care physician Richard Leiter, M.D., asks whether dying at home — the preference of most people in the United States — should always be the goal for patients at the end of life in a recent New York Times editorial. Leiter’s principal concern is the potential burden on family caregivers when a patient receives […]
Health care organizations, hospices included, continue to be prime targets for hackers and other cybercriminals, leading to data breaches that disclose protected health information and cause potentially huge financial losses. Despite the risks, most health care providers do not have adequate protections in place, according to a new report by cybersecurity watchdog Kapersky. The average […]
Doulas have long been present at one of life’s most important milestones: the birth of a baby. Now, some are trained to provide support during individuals’ final moments as End-of-Life Doulas (EOLD). As the number of EOLDs grows, hospices are increasingly coordinating their efforts with providers of these services and in some cases are training […]
Nearly 80% of consumers who received background information on palliative care said they would choose it for themselves or their loved ones, according to a recent survey by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC). However, a lack of public awareness persists. CAPC’s survey is designed to track awareness, perceptions, attitudes and interest in palliative […]
Patients of color suffering from advanced kidney disease are underrepresented among palliative care patients, recent research has found. Outreach to these communities can improve patients’ quality of life as well as expand providers’ market penetration. Palliative care utilization among hospitalized patients suffering from end-stage kidney disease has risen overall, the study found, but black and […]
The Southern California Hospice Foundation is building the first-of-its-kind residential, end-of-life care home to be established in Orange County, Calif., and the fourth such residence in the state. Dubbed Heavenly Home, the six-bedroom facility provides vulnerable hospice patients with a place to live during the last three weeks of life, staffed with full time caregivers. […]
Hospices nationwide are increasingly impacted by consolidation not only in their own sector but among their referral partners, including acute care hospitals. These consolidations particularly threaten smaller, nonprofit providers who are struggling to compete with large, national for-profit entities. When groups of acute care providers consolidate, many seek a single post-acute provider who can offer […]