Every year FHPCA asks the Governor’s office to declare November Hospice and Palliative Care Month which he has done for 2024. Thank you Gov. DeSantis for your support of hospice!
Your agency may be meeting the "letter of the law” care requirements but that can still leave people dissatisfied. This webinar will first address key bereavement regulations and programming, as well as recommendations for creative, effective ways to ensure compliance. Next the program will cover the intended "spirit" of each regulation. The goal is to increase bereavement professionals’ confidence about their overall knowledge of related programming and services and to create a plan to raise the bar for offered services.
The informational visit is an excellent opportunity to educate eligible patients and families about the hospice Medicare benefit and why they should use your agency. This session will share the best method for delivering hospice information in a non-threatening and highly informative way. It will explore how to share the gift of hospice, overcome barriers to admission, and effectively and compliantly turn potential referrals into hospice admissions.
The willingness to recommend (WTR) question on HHCAHPS surveys is a macro-level measure that can seem impossible to influence. But moving the dial on your HHCAHPS rankings must be top of mind because this measure outweighs everything else related to meeting and exceeding patient and client expectations. This presentation will focus on taking specific actions to enhance a patient’s likelihood to recommend your agency. It will review best practices of organizations with a WTR of 90% or more. You’ll learn about rapid service improvements that create consistent experiences and the best advocates you should be watching. It will explain what you should stop saying to patients and families. Effective and ineffective testimonials, along with social media and online reviews, will also be covered.
When it comes to providing bereavement interventions, the least effective for people who are determined high risk are mailings and support groups. Yet nationally there are programs that only provide those two options. Are the people who need hospice most being left out? Could more be done to provide higher levels of bereavement care by using current resources creatively? This webinar will look at expanding services by thinking WAY outside the box.
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, participants will learn 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 into the details and characteristics that differentiate terminal and chronic patients with the same diagnosis.
With shorter lengths of stay and decreasing staffing ratios, hospice nurses, social workers, chaplains, and aides are extremely busy. Often team meetings are video conferences and clinicians have less time to stop by the office. Opportunities for relationship building and informal, just-in-time collaborations are infrequent - which causes care plans to become siloed and fragmented. This emerging reality comes with several challenges, including continuing to incorporate true wholistic interdisciplinary collaboration into patient and family care. Many agencies can no longer rely on in-person meetings for those informal collaborations. Agencies must be intentional and deliberate in their approach to ensure the team stays connected and patients and families receive the best possible hospice experience. This webinar will ground participants in their mission while adapting to the realities of the new hospice environment.
What skill set and knowledge base are needed for advanced-level bereavement program management? What does a highly effective bereavement program look like? What are the national best practices that address the needs of medium- and high-risk people? This webinar will answer these questions and explore the concept of high-level hospice bereavement care, including must-know information for bereavement professionals and what services should be offered.
Hospitals are “mini cities” that hold many opportunities to deliver the gift of hospice, serve more patients, and grow. Understanding how a hospital works, the different customer groups within it, and what the value propositions are is vital to increasing referrals. This webinar will provide the knowledge, insight, and strategies necessary to develop a hospital into a major account. For those hospices concerned about keeping their length-of-stay under control to avoid cap issues, driving admissions from hospitals is key. Participants will receive 11 specific tools and strategies to build a hospital-based business and walk away with new ideas and approaches to drive success.
The end of the Public Health Emergency means the return of the volunteer 5% requirement, a rule that CMS will reinstate as of January 1, 2024. Resuming compliance with the volunteer requirement is posing a significant regulatory challenge for agencies, post pandemic. This webinar will take agencies through the hospice volunteer requirements. It will review what activities qualify for the 5% requirement. In addition, it will address best practices for recruitment, retention, and utilization of volunteers to run a successful and effective hospice volunteer program. Volunteers are critical to a hospice agency. This timely webinar will help agencies design an effective volunteer program to meet the reinstated 2024 requirement.
There are many considerations when purchasing an agency. New owners must understand licensure, Medicare, Medicaid, Conditions of Participation, fraud, compliance, payment model changes, and other important operational issues. Completing due diligence is critical as is understanding how the agency operates - especially in states with enhanced oversight like California, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona.
Do you understand the type of services that are needed, where they will be provided, and by whom? Do the regulations mandate what type of professionals to employ? What are the agency’s star ratings? How does quality and reporting impact reimbursement? Has the agency undergone recent oversight with TPE or post-payment medical review? What potential risks may be involved (e.g., turnover, HR, education, and training issues)? What is your transition plan for identified risk areas? This webinar will help answer those questions and cover the key regulatory, licensing, payment, oversight, and compliance issues that all agencies are facing. This is a must-attend webinar for new owners or anyone contemplating purchasing an agency.