Revisions to the Hospice Medicare Summary Notice

For more than a year, NHPCO has advocating for changes to the Hospice Medicare Summary Notice (MSN) with CMS. The discussions began as provider members of NHPCO described in detail the reaction of some patients and families as they received a MSN – families were confused at the charges recorded on the MSN for each discipline,

NHPCO has issued a Regulatory Alert to members, available in the Regulatory & Compliance Center of NHPCO's website.

NHPCO is pleased to share this news with the hospice community.

Call for Proposals for NHPCO's 2012 Clinical Team Conference is Open!

"How Do You CARE (Collaborate, Assess, Relieve and Evaluate)?" - NHPCO is interested in learning how you CARE and invites you to be part of its esteemed faculty for its 13th Clinical Team Conference and Pediatric Intensive, to be held at Walt Disney World’s Dolphin Hotel in Lake Buena Vista, Florida from November 5 – 7, 2012.

Whether clinicians are providing care to patients and families through interdisciplinary practice, managing interdisciplinary team staff, leading quality efforts or responsible for related practices and processes, they need the same critical information at your disposal; information that helps them CARE: collaborate, assess, relieve and evaluate. Submit a proposal that demonstrates your successes in one of more of these areas; you may be selected to join NHPCO for our field’s only interdisciplinary-focused conference!

Submission Deadlines: Concurrent sessions (60 minutes) and Workshops (90 minutes) – February 14, 2012; Poster Sessions – March 1, 2012

To review the call for proposals, please visit: http://nhpco.confex.com/nhpco/CTC13/cfp.cgi.

More information on the conference, including online registration is available at www.nhpco.org/mlc2012.

New Report "Facts & Figures: Hospice Care in America" Released

Dying Americans Using Hospice Care Remains Stable but New Report Reveals Drop in Length of Service. Greater Proportion of Heart Disease Patients Accessing Hospice Reports NHPCO

NHPCO's annual report on hospice facts and figures released this week shows the number of patients served remains fairly constant at 1.58 million in 2010 (a slight rise from1.56 million served in 2009). Yet a statistic of concern to hospice and palliative care professionals is the drop in both median and average length of service. Read the press release online.

Two key points:

• The median (50th percentile) length of service in 2010 was 19.7 days, a decrease from 21.1 days in 2009.
• The average length of service dropped to 67.4 days in 2010 from 69 days in 2009.
  

Download the new report: Facts & Figures: Hospice Care in America.




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A Message from Don Schumacher

NHPCO invites you to review the January 2012 issue of its digital newsletter, NewsLine. In the cover article, NHPCO president and CEO Don Schumacher discusses what our focus and shared priorities must be for the year ahead 2012. It includes a summary of past accomplishments and much more.

Read January NewsLine online!

Support The HELP the Hospices Act!

Calling All Hospice Advocates: The HELP Hospice Act has been introduced in the US House as H.R. 3506, and the race is on to get co-sponsors! You can use the Hospice Action Network's Legislative Action Center right now to contact your representative and ask them to sign on- as always the HAN team is available to answer any questions you might have, contact them at info@nhpcohan.org

Visit the HAN Legislative Action Center today!

National Day of Listening - November 25

NHPCO is National Partner for StoryCorps’ 2011 National Day of Listening

Many Americans know Friday, November 25 as “Black Friday” – traditionally the largest shopping day of the year. However, the nation’s hospice providers want people to know that it’s more than that.

November 25 is the third annual National Day of Listening, a national holiday started by the acclaimed oral history nonprofit organization StoryCorps in 2008. It is a day when families are encouraged to give the gift of storytelling to their loved ones, leaving a legacy that’s likely to be treasured more than any gift you could purchase. It is an effort to encourage all Americans to honor a friend, a loved one, or a member of their community by interviewing them about their lives.

As part of November’s National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, NHPCO has been encouraging hospice providers and community coalitions to make the 2011 National Day of Listening part of the outreach efforts for the month.

National Day of Listening participants are encouraged to record their National Day of Listening interviews, using equipment that is readily available in most homes—from cell phones to tape recorders to computers or even pen and paper. StoryCorps has created a free Do-It-Yourself interview guide with equipment recommendations and interview instructions available online at www.nationaldayoflistening.org.

“The idea of listening during the holiday season has clearly resonated with people across the country,” says StoryCorps founder and MacArthur “Genius” Dave Isay. “The National Day of Listening, which coincides with Black Friday, provides a meaningful alternative to holiday consumerism and proves that simply listening to one another is the least expensive and most meaningful gift we can give.”

“Life review is an important activity that hospices use with the patients and families they care for at the end of life,” says J. Donald Schumacher, NHPCO president and CEO. “So StoryCorps’ National Day of Listening is something we strongly support and we’re pleased to be a national partner.”

To see how more people across the country are celebrating this year’s National Day of Listening, visit: www.nationaldayoflistening.org.

New NHPCO Quality Resource Center Online

NHPCO is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Resource Center web page. NHPCO, with assistance from the Quality and Standards Committee, has revised and enhanced its online quality resource offerings to better assist the hospice community to meet CMS quality reporting requirements, as well as to continue to build organizational excellence and improve hospice and palliative care delivery and outcomes.

The Quality Resource Center offers tools to assess and improve the quality of hospice care and services, information and resources for compliance with the new CMS quality reporting requirements, NHPCO’s Standards of Hospice Care, NHPCO Staffing Guidelines and QAPI Resources. The Resource Center also includes the NHPCO Quality Partners program resources and the Self-Assessment System.

Access the Quality Resource Center today to learn more.