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Hospices Stepping Up Performance on Visits-in-Last-Days-of-Life Measure

Hospice News

The number of registered nurse and social worker visits during a patient’s final week is one of the seven quality measures that CMS uses to evaluate providers. Social worker visits in the last days of life also rose to 9% in 2021, up from 7% in 2020. In 2019, for example, the percentage was 66%.

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Palliative Care Patients Receiving Psychosocial Support More Likely to Choose Hospice

Hospice News

Researchers in Israel studied 180 hospitalized cancer patients between November 2018 and March 2020. They found that patients who utilized social worker, psychologist and/or chaplain services chose to forgo aggressive treatments in their final days more often than those who had not, according to results published in the journal Oncology.

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Hospice News’ Top 10 Stories of 2022

Hospice News

1 Social Workers Leaving Hospice, Health Care in Record Numbers (July 11). One seldom-discussed aspect of this year’s pervasive labor shortage was the number of social workers who had left the field. Social workers cited a lack of employer engagement as a leading cause of burnout and turnover, sources told Hospice News.

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Facility-Bound Hospice Patients Less Likely to Get SIA Visits

Hospice News

Researchers analyzed 2020 claims data to identify associations between SIA utilization and hospice Medicare beneficiaries’ characteristics such as site of service, level of care and length of stay, among others. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced SIA in 2016.

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The Case for Integrating Social Determinants Into Palliative Care

Hospice News

The interdisciplinary nature of palliative care, especially the inclusion of social workers, positions palliative care nicely to help to address the myriad needs that people have,” Maxwell told Hospice News. The need to address social determinants has been cited as an impetus for the push toward value-based reimbursement.

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VITAS Expects a Steady 2024 for Revenue, Growth

Hospice News

VITAS is the nation’s largest provider of hospice care by market share, according to 2020 data from LexisNexis. The program included a one-time retention payment that ranged from $2,000 to $15,000 per employee for nurses, nurse managers, home health aides and social workers who completed at least 12 months of employment.

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Systematic Change Needed to Support Family Caregivers of Hospice Patients

Hospice News

And while hospices offer social workers and spiritual care, many families continue to have unmet needs that could impede some patients’ access to hospice. More than a third (34%) of family caregivers were Baby Boomers in 2020, according to a report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC).

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