Part 1: Critical Regulations for Agency Compliance
Part 2: Effectively Managing Your Hospice Team
Part 3: Understanding HQRP, Reporting, Updates, Payment Models & Reimbursement Continue reading
2024 Hospice Clinical Management Series
Part 1 of this three-part webinar series will review regulations and compliance issues that are critical to hospice leadership. You’ll learn about Medicare hospice eligibility and how to successfully guide your team to support terminality and regulatory compliance. As Medicare oversight continues, it is critical that leadership understands the regulations and what qualifies patients for hospice and continued services.
This webinar will address the tools required to work with your team to meet those eligibility requirements and what to do when a patient is no longer eligible. In addition to the financial bottom line, leadership is accountable for patient care, agency quality, Hospice Compare scores, PEPPER scores, and a multitude of other reporting scores. Understanding the regulations and eligibility is crucial; Part 1 is a must-attend for all new leadership or those requiring a refresher. Continue reading
Part 2 of this three-part webinar series will help new managers identify key areas of leadership focus and will cover the key elements of effectively managing a hospice team. Learn how the regulation defines team members, how to manage your team, what the expectations should be, qualifications, and competencies, both for orientation and annual skills training. Discover how to effectively run an IDT, how to prepare your team for an IDT, and how to prepare for recertifications to support terminality and hospice Medicare eligibility. In addition, this program will review the live discharge process and how to guide your team through the discharge process.
Part 2 is about leadership, administration, and how to guide your team with successful management of the patient plan of care through assessment, documentation, and the IDT process. New managers often lack the skillset to address issues of productivity, documentation timeliness, or quality of care so this is particularly critical for new hospice leaders as a guide through the regulations, hospice Medicare eligibility, and managing a team. Continue reading
The Bereavement Volunteer Training program is designed for volunteers who have completed an initial hospice volunteer training course. While volunteer managers are encouraged to attend this webinar, this is not a webinar on how to teach this course, but instead, this is the actual course that volunteers should attend.
Part 1 of this two-part series is designed to provide in-depth training for volunteers who wish to work in a bereavement program. It will cover techniques and interventions that are more advanced than those in typical, initial volunteer training courses. Continue reading
The Bereavement Volunteer Training program is designed for volunteers who have completed an initial hospice volunteer training course. Part 2 of this two-part series will address the role of the bereavement volunteer when thoughts of suicide are present and explain how to conduct screening and check-in calls. It will also explore volunteer-specific interventions when common complex situations occur in the bereavement setting, including the importance of setting and maintaining personal and professional boundaries. Continue reading
How many times a week do you wrestle with difficult clinical issues that involve complex moral and ethical components with no clear-cut answers? How often do your colleagues struggle with moral distress over clinical decisions and resource allocations? How many times have you reread a clinical policy and recognized that there are ethical components that are inadequately addressed? A well-functioning bioethics committee can assist with all these issues and more! Continue reading
The most recent numbers from NHPCO show that 24% of all hospice admissions are people with cancer and 24% are people with Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related disorders. The data also shows that the median length of stay has dropped to just 17 days. This means that care is more challenging and there is less time to accomplish important goals.
It’s also true that caregiver stress, burnout, and trauma have increased. It is more important than ever to refine your skill set to maneuver around all these challenges, which include denial as a coping strategy, learned helplessness, and avoidance related to culture and religious traditions. This webinar will address these topics and more to specifically guide caregivers through those important and meaningful conversations. Continue reading
Your QAPI program must be an agency-wide, data-driven, quality-assessment, and performance-improvement program. In this session you will learn:
-Keys to a quality improvement program
-Regulations you need to know to establish a QAPI program
-How Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) fits with QAPI
-How to utilize CASPER reports, analysis of high-risk/high-volume/problem-prone areas, the Hospice Care Index, and more to drive your QAPI program
-How to review project samples, audit tools, and indicators that will be provided Continue reading
No leadership team can afford to overlook the public reporting and financial implications of their CAHPS Hospice Survey scores. This program will offer practical tips to boost your survey response rate and increase your scores. Join us to learn how to leverage these scores to elevate care quality and team performance – improved scores reflect excellent teamwork and should be a source of pride! Continue reading
This webinar will address how assisted-living communities and healthcare organizations in general can better develop partnerships with hospice agencies to advance their mission and business objectives. You’ll learn an approach to providing a superior resident and family experience when receiving hospice services.
Innovative programming and services will be presented that will enhance service quality and strengthen communication between families, staff, and hospice caregivers. A successful partnership with hospice and assisted-living facilities will extend the care continuum. Continue reading
This webinar is designed to help members gain a better understanding of lawmakers’ perspectives and use that knowledge to build stronger relationships while conveying an effective, winning message. Continue reading
News
This year’s Forum was a great success! While we are preparing follow-up emails, evaluations, attendee lists, and CEU information to go out this week, don’t forget to mark your calendar for 2025:
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12:00 PM - 2024 Hospice Billing Series
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12:00 PM - The Top 10 Ways for Agencies to Grow
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12:00 PM - Managing Patient Complaints
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All it takes is one racially insensitive tweet or gender-biased text to turn off patients, employees, recruits, and the community. Don't let insensitive email, prejudiced posts, or bullying blogs trigger lawsuits and damage your brand.
Learn how to put best practices-based content rules and policies governing email, Zoom, social media, mobile devices, and other electronic communications tools to work in support of your DEI policy program. Gain the know-how to establish and implement effective DEI policy and procedures designed to minimize litigation risks, manage employee behavior, and maximize compliance with federal/state laws and industry/government regulations.
So often a team member might be described as “difficult,” “ineffective,” or problematic” when in fact they are experiencing some form of burnout. End-of-life care requires specific skill sets for all team members and just because someone has a license or experience in a related field does not mean they will feel comfortable or adequate working in hospice or palliative care. Feelings of inadequacy can quickly lead to a dynamic called “learned helplessness” and/or a sense of burnout – which in turn can lead to problematic behaviors. It is imperative for managers and team members to have a thorough understanding of burnout and empathy fatigue and the knowledge and skills necessary to turn it around.
New and experienced hospice billers should periodically review eligibility requirements and recent reimbursement and election clarifications. This session will examine eligibility verifications and Election Statement and Addendum and Notice of Election requirements under recent regulatory updates. It will walk through the Late Notice of Election and the exceptions process of appeal. A comprehensive review of eligibility requirements, all aspects of dealing with Election Statement changes, and everything related to the Notice of Election will be included.
If you are part of a hospice revenue-cycle team, this three-part series is a must! It will help you maximize hospice reimbursements, provide exceptional care, ensure accurate documentation, and avoid billing mistakes. Medicare billing regulations can be overwhelming, and clarifications are continuous. Hospice reimbursement is driven by excellent care, accurate documentation, and a revenue-cycle team that can bring it home! This series will provide a thorough understanding and step-by-step guide to hospice billing. New billing staff will gain confidence and seasoned billers will benefit from the updates and refreshers.
Your emergency preparedness plan must be tested annually and every two years a community-based exercise, facility-based exercise, mock disaster drill, or tabletop exercise must be completed. This testing must be documented in the emergency plan. Many agencies are unable to participate in community events and opt to utilize tabletop exercises – but do they meet the testing requirements?
This webinar will review the testing and documentation requirements for emergency preparedness, including requirements specific to tabletop exercises. You’ll learn how tabletop exercise scenarios are chosen, created, documented, and used to improve your emergency response.
The expression Hire Well, Live Well® grows more significant in the face of unprecedented healthcare industry change. How satisfied are you with the people you hire? This webinar will expand your skills and understanding of the hiring process. Improved interviewing skills and hiring proficiency ensures stronger employment decisions, reduced turnover, and a more productive, coordinated team. Join us to learn employee onboarding methods that set new employees up for success.
This webinar will provide 10 essential elements for growing your hospice, home care, or personal care agency. It will provide a carefully thought-out architecture for growth that you can use to create a road map. The 10 areas will include:
1. Create a culture of excellence and growth
2. Deliver a quality service totally focused on the business of caring
3. Make your clinical team your best friend
4. The power of differentiation
5. Level of care management
6. Install a professional sales model
7. A diversified set of referral sources
8. A high performing intake function
9. Manage growth with data
10. Develop a state-of-the-art senior living community strategy
Hospice 201 will provide a current review of the hospice industry and what to anticipate with final rule updates for CY2025. It will look at hospice from a regulatory, compliance, reimbursement, and quality perspective. It will address how to prepare your agency to meet the changes, including touching on the introduction of the new HOPE patient assessment instrument.
This will be a high-level “touch point” webinar focusing on current trends and concerns impacting the hospice industry, including but not limited to key survey findings and how to remain as initiative-taking as possible in an industry that continues to embrace change and increased oversight.
Recent years have brought an abundance of updates to hospice Medicare billing regulations. Accurate monthly claims and navigating around the edits and errors is key to timely, correct payments. This webinar will review the process step-by-step and provide real-world examples of how to successfully deal with the changes and effectively conduct physician billing. In addition, it will provide an overview of billing requirements for patients with a Medicare Advantage Plan participating in the VBID Model.
Complaints will arise, but is your team prepared to manage them? The patient rights requirements in the Conditions of Participation mandate that complaints be investigated, and complete documentation be maintained of the complaint, investigation, and resolution.
This webinar will review the CoP requirements for complaint management, including documentation from receipt of complaint to resolution and how to track and trend complaints to improve patient care. It will address how to develop a customer service program aimed at improving patient satisfaction and decreasing complaints from patients, staff members, and customers.
Face-to-face requirements, physician billing, and the aggregate cap self-reporting requirement are just a few of the daily reimbursement-related challenges covered in this webinar. Specific physician billing codes for palliative care will also be addressed to expand your agency's knowledge of palliative care reimbursement and the benefit for patients in the VBID Model. HIS transmission requirements and the increased penalty for noncompliance will also be covered, as will medical review denials and how PEPPER reports affect your hospice.
The HOPE tool was confirmed and adopted with the 2025 hospice final rule. It is imperative that hospices be prepared to accurately capture the patient-specific data to accurately complete the HOPE tool. This tool will replace the current HIS and will be completed at different timepoints. This session will address all required data points, the HOPE assessment timepoints, new outcome measures that will be calculated from the data, the impact on Hospice Quality Reporting Program compliance, and the detailed timeline for implementation.
