Posted Wednesday, August 16, 2023
The pandemic brought hospice referrals almost to a halt, may have lingering impacts on how providers are approaching their community outreach and marketing efforts.
Referrals from assisted living and skilled nursing facilities represent a large portion of hospice patients, along with hospital and health system referrals. Limited access to facility-based settings during the pandemic caused hospice referral volumes to drop significantly, posing financial and operational challenges for many providers.
Though some hospices have begun to see improvement as restrictions eased with the PHE on May 11, others continue to struggle toward a referral rebound.
“A lot of providers are trying not to make any irrevocable decisions, because it is a strange time with nothing as it was,” Ponder-Stansel, president and CEO of Alivia Care, told Hospice News. “There’s a lot less demand for facility-based general inpatient care and more demand for continuous home hospice care. Nursing home populations are down, we’re seeing shorter lengths of stay and more acutely ill patients getting referred much later. We don’t know if that’s going to even out in this first year post-pandemic.”
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