Bills Introduced to Stop the Rate Cut

Bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate to stop the Medicare hospice rate cuts. Follow the link to find out the history of the rate cuts, who sponsored the bills, what the bill actually does, and (most importantly) what you NEED to do to support this legislation. Time is very short to make this happen!

NHPCO Files Suit Against Medicare

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization is suing Medicare to stop the rate increase.

Guess that will silence all the people who have complained over the years that NHPCO wasn't aggressive enough. Personally, I'm not sure that they haven't been too aggressive in this instance, but I don't really know enough about the inner working of the process or the lawsuit to know for sure. I hope it turns out well, and assume NHPCO thinks they have a good shot at winning or they wouldn't have picked this fight.

Stories of a Hospice Nurse

I was recently introduced to a blog written by a full-time hospice on-call nurse, and wanted to point you to one of her stories. I spend most of my time talking about the business of hospice, but we should never forget how hard hospice is. Everyone understands that we work with death and dying everyday, but what many don't remember is the fact that we work with families who are under great stress. The best of families show some dysfunction during these types of hard times, so just imagine what happens when you put a dysfunctional family under stress.

Check out these two links (1 and 2) to read a rather tame example!

Shaping the Minds of America’s Youth

In my last post I said, "It is not an overstatement to say that we are reaching the goal of changing the way our nation views and faces the end of life." Now, I have proof.

The Beloit College Mindset List, which is "a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college", has provided me with my proof. I found the list very interesting since it is full of pearls of wisdom such as, "For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead." If you want to feel old, you should read the whole list.

The part that makes this list news on hospice blog is that the list reports that, "All have had a relative--or known about a friend's relative--who died comfortably at home with Hospice." Think about that for a moment – according to this list, every incoming college freshman this year has either had a personal hospice experience or has a friend that has. Every college freshman has somewhere in their mind that dying at home with hospice is at least an option and may even think it is the norm. We've come a long way baby!

This revelation puts into focus the fact that the hospice movement has accomplished its biggest goal. There is no turning back. Dying at home is part of the American experience. Our focus now must be on the dying comfortably at home part, and that is why I've been on my soapbox about how all hospices must start preparing for the government (our largest payor source) to treat us like a business. The "hospice movement" has accomplished its goal. We are now just hospice – not a movement. We cost Medicare quite a bit of money. (We also save them quite a bit, but that's beside the point here.) The American people now expect us to be here. The newness is wearing off. All of this is something to celebrate, and something that the hospice pioneers should feel an immense amount of pride about.

We've arrived! Now we must fight to keep this movement from becoming just another method of healthcare delivery. Is our next generation of hospice leaders ready to step up to that challenge?

(Once again thanks to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization for bringing the Beloit College Mindset List to the attention of me and all of their members.)