all kinds of Volunteer Coordinating questions.....

[ocean (driver) sharp]

Can someone give me some examples of what their hospice includes in their 5 percent? Women who make blankets and walker bags… do their hours count? What about volunteers who help with health fairs etc? Do you offer a different training for clerical volunteers versus clinical volunteers? Do you seperate out mileage and actual visit times? Do you keep track of clinical and clerical time seperately. How extensive is your criminal history that you run on each volunteer? What are some ways you utilize volunteers to boost your 5%? Finally, my last question for now is regarding In-services. What does your organization offer to volunteers on a yearly basis and what are some that you add in because you feel they are beneficial but are not required? Do you do these at a meeting? Online? How do the ones that miss make them up?

[Virginia McCaleb]

No you cannot count any craft towards the 5% unless the patient is helping with it, crafts has to be done with patient

[Greg Schneider]

Thanks for your great questions Ocean. Kelly Keller provided some very informative responses. I would like to address some of these questions over the next couple of weeks from the perspective of the Conditions of Participation (42 CFR Part 418) in the appropriate HCF discussion GROUPS. In the future, I would recommend asking questions and/or initiating discussions in the relevant HCF GROUP. This helps others find your questions and answers easier. Thanks.

Greg Schneider
HCF Creator

[Kelly Keller]

Ocean - you are raising a whole lot of questions that our hospice is addressing in our new manual materials, so it is fresh on my mind. Meeting the 5% can be a challenge, but I feel it is important that we volunteer coordinators be careful not to fall into the trap of filling hours with fluff at the expense of the hours that matter to improve patient and family care. My favorite thing that is helping get hours is recruiting specifically for vigil or respite volunteers who sit with patients for 2-4 hours at a time. Our hospice has determined that the current interpretation of Medicare guidelines is that any direct time volunteers spend with patients always count toward the 5% (travel time to a patient counts, but is considered indirect time). If the volunteer is not directly with the patient, then it needs to pass the litmus test of "is this a vital enough function that if a volunteer were not doing it, we would have to pay a staff member to do it?" The time of these types of volunteers is considered "Administrative" - an indirect task. Using this litmus test, sewing circles and crafts do not make the cut, as it would be an extremely rare director who would pay staff to do this. This is not to say these things are not important and it is highly recommended that if volunteer coordinators have volunteers who are doing these things that they track those hours - but not within the 5% figure. It is still a way of demonstrating the value of the volunteer program.

Regarding criminal background checks - we have always run a 5-year criminal background check as well as a check through our state's sex offender and adult/child protective registries (this goes back 20 years).

On in-services - our organization requires 5 in-services of our volunteers that are required by Medicare. But we also provide non-required in-services that are beneficial. Some of our offices do these at regular monthly meetings, some do an annual retreat like meeting, and all have to individualize in order to get volunteers their in-services who simply can't make the scheduled group meetings. We also provide written materials for in-services they can do via email or with pen and paper.

[Julie Becker]

What are the 5 in-services that are required by Medicare?