NHPCO Brings 100 Hospice Leaders Together to Create Future Care Delivery Models

More than 100 hospice and palliative care senior level managers and leaders gathered in Florida to identify and explore innovative approaches to bring the benefits of hospice care to people with advanced or chronic illness. 

Creating the Hospice Palliative Care Continuum: A Futuring Forum was the first official event hosted by NHPCO’s Mary J. Labyak Institute for Innovation at the Westin Diplomat Hotel, January 22 – 24, 2013. The focus of the Futuring Forum was to identify and create innovative approaches to bring the services hospice provides – including pain and symptom management, care coordination, home safety assessments, emotional and spiritual support and caregiver education and services -- to individuals and family caregivers coping with serious and chronic illness.

The Futuring Forum built upon participatory experiences with forum attendees engaging with presenters during five master classes and working in small groups to explore new ideas.

Master Classes featured guest speakers from outside of the hospice palliative care field. They included Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle; Clement Bezold, PhD, founder and chairman of the Institute for Alternative Futures; Jennie Chin Hansen, executive director of the American Geriatrics Society; Jim Kinsey, senior consultation services specialist for Planetree; and Steve Gross, chief playmaker and executive director of Life is Good Foundation.

“The opportunity for us to tap into the great minds of a number of dynamic innovators from many different fields fostered a spirit of creativity that allowed many of us to think in new ways and reframe the traditional hospice model as a series of services or products that individuals with serious illness so desperately need,” said J. Donald Schumacher, NHPCO president and CEO.

Added Schumacher, “Some of the common themes that repeatedly came up as our guest presenters interacted with Forum attendees centered on the dedication and passion that motivates hospice professionals. The hospice field was created by those striving to innovate how the dying were cared for over 30 years ago – the need to tap back into this creativity came up repeatedly during the Forum.”

NHPCO plans to share ideas from the Futuring Forum at its upcoming Management & Leadership Conference (April 25-27, 2013, at the Gaylord National Harbor Convention Center, National Harbor, MD) and via other member platforms to prompt further discussion and collaboration of new ideas and innovations.