Providing Hospice Services in 2009

[Greg Schneider]

I think we can all agree that 2008 was one of the more challenging years in recent decades for our planet and its inhabitants. Those challenges have also fostered a new sense of hope for the future as we begin 2009. The hospice sector of the healthcare industry continues to be a rapidly growing business sector in spite of the economic slowdown. The number of patients served by hospice has nearly doubled since 2000 to 1,300,000 in 2006. However, economic pressures due to the recent financial crisis and the unabated rise in healthcare costs will continue to force the hospice community to be cautious in its choices for bringing care to those who are dying. Competitive forces are also at work -- the number of hospice providers grew by almost 50% from 2003-2006 while the number of patients served by hospice grew by only 30% over the same period. Professionally managed volunteer programs within hospice organizations can help ease these financial pressures. The return on investment for well-run volunteer programs can bring major benefits to hospices. The number of For-Profit hospice service providers has been growing rapidly over this same time period. In the 2003-2006 time period the number of Not-For-Profit hospice service providers has not had any significant change while the For-Profit sector has nearly doubled. It is anticipated the number of For-Profit service providers, which are presently about equal to the number of Not-For-Profit hospice service providers, will overtake the Not-For-Profit sector and become the dominant sector in the next 5 years. This dynamic will continue to place increasing pressure on hospice administrators in Not-For-Profit agencies to pay greater attention to their costs of doing business. It is one of the Hospice Volunteer Association's goals for 2009 to help hospices improve the efficiencies associated with running their volunteer programs by offering cost-saving services to its member hospices. A few examples are: -- HVA frequently receives requests from individuals who wish to serve their communities through hospice volunteering. If you are an HVA member hospice, your hospice automatically receives first priority on referrals of new volunteers. -- HVA publishes its quarterly HV News e-magazine as an excellent educational resource that has information about hospice volunteering and volunteer management that you will find nowhere else. If your hospice is a member of HVA, all of your volunteers are permitted to join HVA for free and utilize this resource. We encourage you to market your hospice's volunteer program by advertising that volunteers will be given a free membership when they complete the training. Use this to give your hospice a competitive edge!! -- HVA's Patient Data Vault service can greatly enhance your volunteer program. Volunteers are also more apt to join your hospice when you show them how you have made the reporting aspects of being a volunteer so easy -- to say nothing of the operational and cost efficiencies volunteer managers will experience in their programs and the communications with their volunteers. We also hope to launch our Hospice Volunteer Training Institute in 2009, which will bring an exciting new perspective to training volunteers. We encourage members to give us feedback about the HCF. The features of the HCF continue to grow and improve. If you are interested in getting more involved in the HCF Community, please let me know. This year we are encouraging all of you to initiate new discusssions with your questions and to make more contributions to the discussion groups. We wish all HCF members a most healthy and happy 2009!! Greg Schneider HCF Creator/Founder President, HVA