Is end-of-life care threatened by today’s healthcare environment? Learn Why it Matters!
The vision of the original hospice movement was to ensure that everyone had access to compassionate, comprehensive, community focused, end-of-life care. Today, as the growth in for-profit hospice providers continues to expand so has the concern about trends to pursue business models designed to manipulate patient selective, define narrow service communities, and maximize financial incentives which threatens the hospice movement and this vision, damaging the spirit of hospice care in the name of profits. Ohio’s Hospice is launching an educational initiative to explore some of the pressing issues.
Preserving the Legacy of Hospice to Protect End-of-Life Care in the U.S.
Hospice leaders believe the key to meeting the needs of patients at the end of life is to go “back to the future” and fully embrace patient/family-centered care and population health.1As originally championed by Cicely Saunders, MD, the founder of the modern hospice movement, the hospice model of care was based on providing end-of-life care… Click here to read more!
The legacy of hospice care. Learn more!
Dr. Cicely Saunders was a social worker, nurse and physician who had a dream in the 1950s that no patient should die alone and in pain. From her vision, the modern hospice movement was born, significantly changing the way the medical community approached death and dying. When the hospice movement came to the U.S., hospices were created as not-for-profit community-based organizations that followed Dr. Saunders’ mission, vision and values.
Today, this patient-centered legacy faces a threat from within the hospice movement itself. The rapidly growing for-profit hospice industry is diluting the core elements of Dr. Saunders’ vision. With profits as the goal, these companies are reducing both the depth of community and patient participation and the range of services they offer.
Ohio’s Hospice is an affiliation of not-for-profit hospice providers committed to fulfilling the original vision of Dr. Saunders. Recognizing the need for greater awareness and education about the hospice legacy and its importance for patients, families and hospice providers, Ohio’s Hospice has launched #WhyItMatters. Through community-based and professional outreach, advocacy, White Papers, social media and research, Ohio’s Hospice is striving to ensure that patient-centered, comprehensive, compassionate hospice care is protected now and for the future.