What does it take to move from being an adequate volunteer manager to an exceptional volunteer manager? To start with, you need good critical thinking skills and the ability to engage in creative problem-solving. Today’s volunteer manager must be assertive, solution-focused, and possess the ability to anticipate requests before they are received. This webinar will address what it takes to become an exceptional volunteer manager no matter how large or small your program may be. Continue reading
2024 Exploring Exceptionalism in Volunteer Management Series
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. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
What does it take to move from being an adequate volunteer manager to an exceptional volunteer manager? To start with, you need good critical thinking skills and the ability to engage in creative problem-solving. Today’s volunteer manager must be assertive, solution-focused, and possess the ability to anticipate requests before they are received. This webinar will address what it takes to become an exceptional volunteer manager no matter how large or small your program may be. Continue reading
This webinar will detail how a personal care/private duty service can strengthen and develop your current care continuum and how it adds value to your referral sources and current patient base. Learn what goes into developing a personal care service and the key ingredients for success. This session will provide practical advice, lessons, and tools to start a personal care service. Learn how a personal care service can contribute to an organization’s financial success. Continue reading
This webinar will delve into the transformative power of recognizing and acknowledging workplace contributions. Attendees will discover actionable strategies for creating a culture of appreciation that not only boosts employee morale, but also significantly enhances team performance. Through examples and practical tips, participants will be empowered to implement meaningful gestures of appreciation and foster a work environment where individuals feel valued and motivated and ultimately contribute to the organization’s overall success. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
How would you respond if a surveyor suddenly walked into your agency for survey today? Would your stress level be off the charts? What if you could have your agency at a state of survey readiness year-round? Is it even possible? This webinar will explain the steps to becoming perennially survey ready by using your QAPI program as an evaluation tool, preparing your staff for survey visits, and learning how to design a mock survey. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Accurate hospice eligibility documentation is critical to fulfilling the CoPs and payment requirements. The lack of supporting documentation for a terminal prognosis is the number one reason for denial. Reviewers often look for a significant decline in patient condition. Although this is not a requirement of hospice care, a terminal prognosis is.
This webinar will help clinicians document the slightest changes in baseline measures. More importantly, it will explain how to capture the changes that support terminal prognosis – even without a decline in baseline measures. Go beyond the LCDs and common tools for documenting eligibility by drilling down to the details and characteristics that differentiate terminal and chronic patients with the same diagnosis. Continue reading
This jam-packed webinar will provide updates on numerous issues, including changes to reimbursement, the Hospice Quality Reporting Program, and CAHPS Hospice Survey. It will also address the new HOPE instrument. Don’t miss this important rundown of the new hospice rules…
WEBINAR DETAILS
Emails, text messages, instant messages, direct messages, social media marketing, online review responses… so much of our daily work is now communicated through the written word rather than the spoken word. Unfortunately, much of it is not well written. Join us to learn how written communication impacts your effectiveness and reputation, and how you can stand out with your team and clients as a great communicator! Continue reading
This webinar is designed to equip you with the tools and strategies needed to navigate tough discussions with confidence and empathy. It will address various feedback models to help you structure effective feedback. In addition, it will explore some common responses to difficult conversations – denial, defensiveness, justification, and aggression – and provide techniques for managing these responses constructively.
Say goodbye to the days of feeling uncomfortable before a tough conversation. Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your communication skills and build stronger relationships in both personal and professional settings. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Time to get off the “recruit, train, recruit, train” merry-go-round. If you are losing volunteers as fast as you get them, something is seriously wrong. One major mistake is failing to ensure your program is volunteer friendly and receptive. Volunteers should know that leadership is committed to providing them with the experience they seek. This program will cover everything you need to know about getting and keeping volunteers to meet the needs of patients, families, and your organization. Continue reading
Hospice and home care agencies are discovering that superior customer service experiences lead to increased satisfaction, which, in turn, brings greater compliance with treatments and clinical outcomes. And, sometimes important lessons are learned from outside the healthcare industry.
Join us to learn the essential elements needed to strengthen patient and family experiences. It’s critical to understand the importance of handling an inquiry call, the first 24 hours of being on service, and how to innovate your delivery system to drive excellence. In short, there are strong mission and business reasons to focus on creating an improved patient and family experience. Continue reading
Do you know the top 10 misunderstood hospice regulations? This webinar will enhance your understanding, ensure compliance, optimize your hospice operations, and improve the quality of care provided to your patients.
Plan of Care and Contents: What is required and moving beyond cookie-cutter plans.
Attending Physician: The importance of understanding CMS intentions and addressing low participation rates. Why is high participation a good thing?
Patient and Family Assessment: Discover best practices for admissions and assessments, including the role of medical records, history, talking with patients and families, physical examinations, and admissions. Who can make a referral and/or request hospice services?
Eligibility: Learn about enhancing admission nurses’ assessment skills, presentation of hospice eligibility to physicians, and the inherent pitfalls.
Eligibility Variability: This section will address variability among hospice physicians. What should be done when you have deemed a patient not eligible, and another hospice immediately admits the patient and says they are eligible?
Eligibility Education: There is a lack of education and training within hospices about what makes a patient legally eligible for hospice. Utilization of change of terminal diagnosis, discharge, and revocation will be covered.
Information: What is really required for hospice informational consent, and election of benefits? How do families feel about the admission process? Why do most hospices give out too much information?
Initial Assessment: Clarifying best practices and common misunderstandings.
Comprehensive Assessment: Who does what, when, and by what deadlines. Explore how to improve thoroughness and accuracy.
Survey Awareness: Best practices for CAHPS survey awareness, including misconceptions and how to increase participation.
Bonus: How to handle a transfer and how long you should wait on the other hospice. Continue reading
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 Continue reading
Is your volunteer training just an exercise in jumping through hoops? Is it boring or exciting? Is it short and sweet or comprehensive and based on the principles of adult learning? Are your volunteers so impressed by your training that they tell everyone they know that they have to volunteer with you, if for no other reason than to attend this fabulous education experience?
A high-quality training course followed by ongoing educational opportunities is the first step to building a strong program. Then moving from training to creative programming is essential to ensuring volunteers receive a meaningful experience and patients and families receive the best possible care. Continue reading
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. 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:
Upcoming Events
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12:00 PM - What Do They Believe & Why Does It Matter?
12:00 PM - Compliance for the Hospice Nurse & Aide
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12:00 PM - Working Well Across Four Generations
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12:00 PM - How to Compete as a Small Hospice
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12:00 PM - Leadership & Followership at Work
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12:00 PM - Compliance for a Hospice Volunteer Program
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Have you ever had a patient who was a Scientologist? Has someone you cared for declined to have life-saving care due to religious beliefs? Has a patient or family member displayed a general mistrust for healthcare providers which hampered your ability to provide the best care? These are just a few ways that beliefs impact how we understand health and illness, how we seek to deal with sickness, and how we interact with healthcare providers. This webinar will explore these issues and more to equip you with the knowledge and skill needed to treat each patient with dignity and respect, ensuring that their religious/cultural beliefs and practices are honored.
Part 2 of this five-part compliance series will focus on the roles of hospice RNs and aides. With continued CMS oversight, documentation starting with the initial assessment, comprehensive assessments, and ongoing visits must support patient eligibility for hospice. This presentation will address common compliance and documentation challenges, how to address them, and how to document terminality. It will review the Medicare hospice benefit with a focus on eligibility and how to support eligibility through assessment, LCD utilization, documentation, IDT participation, using the four levels of care, and discharging patients when needed. You’ll also learn about high-risk admissions, what triggers audits, and how to avoid them.
CMS established the Hospice Care Index as part of the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP). It is claims-driven, covers care practices, and is designed to evaluate process measures across the hospice stay. This publicly reported score provides patients, families, caregivers, and referral sources with a tool to make informed decisions regarding care providers.
This webinar will identify the 10 quality indicators, review the HCI report, and provide scenarios and best practices that can be used in developing your agency’s performance improvement plan.
Part 3 of this five-part compliance series will review the role of hospice social workers, spiritual caregivers, counselors, and chaplains and how they can add value to an agency’s quality reporting, team dynamics, and the patient experience.
It will review the CoP best practices for assessments, plans of care, IDG participation, and terminality documentation. You’ll learn some of the challenges and obstacles counseling services face and how to address them. All the responsibilities required in managing patients and families from a psychosocial and emotional perspective will be reviewed.
Part 2 of this three-part series will survey the current reality of intergenerational work environments and delve into both common and unique ways to relate well across the four generations in the workplace (Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z). Failure to understand our general differences and commonalities leads to unnecessary workplace conflict, but this session will shed light on ways to work well across generations.
Welcome to a comprehensive webinar designed exclusively for small hospices navigating the competitive healthcare arena. Delve into an in-depth understanding of the challenges unique to small hospices, uncovering the barriers hindering their path to success. Explore an array of effective strategies meticulously crafted to differentiate your hospice from larger institutions, providing attendees with actionable steps to carve out a distinct niche in the market.
Highlighting pivotal success factors, this session will assist in identifying strengths and opportunities within your operations, enabling attendees to fortify their competitive edge.
Part 3 of this three-part series will cover tools for all staff to positively contribute to the culture and mission of their organization by learning to leverage their current role in the spirit of service.
When each team member understands the important purpose they serve and how they can best contribute, everyone can benefit. Even those not in management or executive positions can lead well by following well. Learn how this concept can shift attitudes and satisfaction on your team.
Most hospice patients are either lacking in decisional capacity upon admission or will reach that point during their care experience. How does this impact the patient’s informed consent? Who does the IDG turn to for decisions on the patient’s behalf? What do you do if you’re unsure about a patient’s capacity?
All of these are critical questions to ask to protect the patient’s autonomy, dignity, and right to choose. Ensure your organization has the information and expertise needed to navigate these murky waters and make certain the best interests of patients and families are served.
Part 4 of this five-part compliance series will review the CoPs that address the hospice volunteer program as a core service. With the end of the PHE, hospices are expected to be in full compliance with the 5% requirement in 2024.
Learn about the role of the hospice volunteer director/manager, volunteers, and what activities meet the 5% requirement. The requirements of a Medicare hospice volunteer training program will be covered. Since there is always tremendous confusion around what qualifies for the volunteer 5% requirement, this webinar will clarify qualification requirements.
To have a smooth-running agency, departments need to collaborate effectively. It’s common to see tension between clinical and sales departments. Different perspectives benefit a team and organization but when those differing perspectives get in the way of a positive culture, it can have a negative impact.
This webinar will provide a deeper understanding of the age-old conflict between clinical and sales departments. Discover the top six contributors to clinical/sales tension and what to do about them. Learn simple key bridging phrases that promote collaboration among teams. Departmental friction can be a distraction and a time waster. Attend this webinar to learn effective and fun team exercises to improve cooperation immediately.
Part 1 of the series will focus on understanding the regulations, the types of deficiencies, including condition level deficiencies and immediate jeopardy, and how to avoid them. It will also drill down on regulatory compliance, including how to prioritize noncompliant areas, assess your agency, write action plans, involve and educate staff, and develop an effective QAPI program.
There will be a brief review of the data-driven information on Care Compare, CAHPS, etc. to explain how to tie those into your QAPI program to ensure compliance and enhance quality and efficiency of care.
After completing training, your volunteers should be fully prepared for the work they face. Most programs utilize a standardized curriculum that meets Medicare guidelines, yet those topics are meant to be “minimum standards” and miss some very important issues and necessary skills.
This webinar will explore several critical skills, including setting and maintaining personal and professional boundaries, the critical importance of supervising volunteer boundaries, volunteers’ part in suicidal ideation intervention, their role in assessing and providing grief and loss support and guidance, and other important dynamics.
