Navigating Ethics in Hospice Care
When hospice patients have no family or stable home, care gets complex. This blog explores how teams can respond with compassion, ethics, and creativity.
Recognizing Signs of Imminent Death: Improving Hospice Care and Quality Outcomes
Understanding when a patient is approaching imminent death is one of the most sensitive and critical aspects of hospice care. Recognizing clear clinical indicators not only allows hospice teams to adjust care plans appropriately but also helps families prepare...
Government Audits: Extrapolation and its Financial Impact
Hospice agencies are under increasing scrutiny by government auditors. A particularly concerning and financially devastating aspect of government audits is the use of statistical extrapolation. Understanding the extrapolation process is essential for providers to...
Innovation in Hospice Bereavement Programs
In recent years, hospice bereavement care has undergone significant transformation. Early programs offered traditional service delivery models relying on limited offerings, and structured and uniform service delivery format. Over time, however, researchers and...
See Something Say Something: Mandatory Reporting!
Hospice clinicians are mandated reporters with an individual duty to report known or suspected patient abuse. See something – say something!
Improving your Organization with FAST Goals
Goals have come to dominate our modern workplace. Goals are a way of breaking down business plans into smaller more manageable pieces. This enables an organization to accomplish some of the targets and plans that were specified during their planning cycle....
Legal Risks of Retaliation: How to Handle Employee Complaints Safely
When an employee brings forward a compliance concern, they’re engaging in what the law defines as protected activity. This might involve reporting a potential violation of hospice regulations, concerns about Medicare fraud, or even raising issues about unsafe working...
What is a Hospice IDG Meeting and Who Should Attend
The hospice interdisciplinary group (IDG) creates a patient’s plan of care and provides holistic care to the patient, caregiver, and family. Hospice Conditions of Participation require the IDG to “review, revise, and document the individualized plan as frequent as the...
Hospice Interdisciplinary Group (Hospice IDG)
Hospice care is patient- and family-centered, where the patient's and family's preferences and needs drive the care plan. The hospice interdisciplinary group (also referred to as Hospice IDG or IDG), also referred to as the interdisciplinary team (IDT) is a team of...
Pay Transparency: What Managers Need to Know
As a manager in hospice care, your role goes beyond overseeing patient care and managing staff. It includes ensuring that your team feels valued and fairly compensated. Pay transparency is becoming a hot topic, and understanding its implications can help you...