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"Does Your Hospice Need Hospice Care?"

Where do you turn for help when your hospice’s health is in question?

Once it begins, the problems can seem to cascade one on top of another. The organization is leaking money, and your market share is atrophying. Your staff is unhappy; anonymous letters of complaint are sent in to your Board of Directors, and your leadership team is splintered and fractionalized, with fingers of blame pointed everywhere but at themselves. A federal audit looms. Patients are being discharged for living too long, while others can’t be admitted because they MIGHT live too long.

Yes, you’re still delivering care, but the burdens on your frontline staff feel onerous, and you’re increasingly seeing the warning signs of burnout. Your staff is saddled with a “new and improved” Electronic Medical Records system that takes five times longer than the old system, with nurses tasked with transcribing unending lists of patients’...

How hospice has changed since the movement began! Back at the beginning, there was no competition, because there wasn’t any money. But today competition is fierce, and requires that we as leaders re-imagine and upgrade our relationships with our clients, our communities, our donors and our referrers. Beyond offering superb care, delivered consistently, and unfailingly going above and beyond what is expected, how can you stand out from other providers in your market?

 Last time, I offered up the first five of these ten ways to thrive in an increasingly competitive market; here are five more.

1.  Know what your community really wants. Often hospices offer programs they think are important but which may not really meet the needs of their community. Great organizations get to know intimately what their customers want. That means spending time talking with patients and families, not just sending out a survey.

2.  Know what your referrers...

When hospice began, there was no competition between us because there was no money involved. But the last ten years has brought an explosion in hospice growth, and today many good hospices find themselves jostling for market share in an ever-more-crowded field.

Beyond offering superb care, delivered consistently, and unfailingly going above and beyond what is expected, how can you stand out from other providers in your market? My work with high-performing hospice organizations inspired me to pull together this list of what I see as the top ten differentiators; here are the first five.

1.  Know how you’re different. Every hospice is required to provide basic things under the Medicare hospice benefit. What sets you apart? Key differentiators are the quality of care you provide, the responsiveness you show to patients and families, physicians, and referral sources, and commitment to your community.

2.  Be timely and do it right the first time. Determine how long it...