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Image Below: All dressed up for the NHPCO Gala recently: Christy Whitney, Jan Jones NHPCO Board Chair, Edo Banach NHPCO CEO ,Patti Moore, Mrs.Banach

What Would Dame Cicely Do?

That was the question posed to attendees at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization's Management and Leadership Conference in Washington DC by the incoming President and CEO, Edo Banach recently.  He told us NHPCO's focus will be bringing value to members and focusing on innovation. We were reminded of milestones reached this year; the 35^th anniversary of the Medicare Hospice Benefit and the 50^th anniversary of St Christopher’s Hospice in London, where the modern-day hospice movement began under Dame Cicely Saunders.  And we were asked to consider “WWDCD” - What Would Dame Cicely Do?  What would she do now, 50 years later?

Holding tightly to the old paradigms isn’t a viable option. Hospice organizations must find ways to identify what patients, families,...

Image Above: NHPCO Gala 2016 Patti Moore and Don Schumacher CEO National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

As I return home from a week in Washington DC, advocating for hospice on Capitol Hill and attending the 31^st National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Management and Leadership Conference, I am once again filled with hope and pride in the difference this work continues to make in the lives of millions of dying people, their families and their loved ones across the country.

While on Capitol Hill on behalf of the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation, I heard the personal stories of Congressmen and Senators who, while they represent diametrically different political points of view, shared very similar experiences of the deaths of loved ones, with and without the support of hospice.

Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) said he and his family experienced the “horrible” death of a beloved grandmother – but that thanks to hospice, his...