As our population ages and the baby boomers reach the end of life corridor, it is anticipated that the current 25% of deaths that occur in nursing homes today, will reach 40% by the year 2040. Although the percentage of nursing facility residents who elect the hospice benefit is still relatively small, less than 6%, the potential is bound to expand as more of the public become educated buyers of end of life care.
Many hospices view the practice of hospice care in institutional settings, as an opportunity to increase their census and expand their reach into their community. For others, the challenge to assimilate quality end of life care in an unrelated institution, can be daunting for hospice leadership and their staff alike. However, there is growing body of literature and research that support the need for increasing hospice care in nursing homes and offer advice for successful partnering with long term care providers.
A comprehensive article was published in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management found on the NHPCO web site and suggested that:
Hospice in nursing homes can provide high quality end-of-life care and offers benefits such as reduced hospitalizations and improved pain management.
The provision of hospice care in nursing homes has been shown to have positive effects on non-hospice residents, suggesting indirect benefits on nursing home clinical practices.
Hospice is relatively underutilized among nursing home residents at the end of life.
For advancing hospice care in nursing homes, a study was published in January 2011 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society -Hospice Use and Outcomes in Nursing Home Residents with Advanced Dementia. This study chronicles those patients who received hospice care, were also found to receive more aggressive pain management and had better family satisfaction survey outcomes regarding their care, than those patients who died without the benefit of hospice.
To help build your nursing home program Enclara Health offers an exclusive promotional tool called MyCareCommunity.org a web based portal for caregivers. Promoting its use with your nursing home partners can help to differentiate your hospice among others in your community. To learn more about obtaining a tactical plan to launch the use of MyCareCommuinity go to Caregiver Support.
1-888-ENCLARA
