momisam

My organization has both a palliative (under traditional home health) and a hospice program. Most of our palliative patients are still seeking treatment (chemo, trials etc) so do not qualify for Hospice yet...but many transition there once treatment options are exhausted. There is a great deal of symptom management to be done in many cases....that is our area of expertise and you can really change their quality of life which is rewarding. Emotionally it can be difficult to go through a year or better of chemo etc with your patient and then help them transition to Hospice and finally give them comfort and dignity at the end. You may not see a lot of home health palliative agencies because it is almost impossible to make money. Patients come in sick and usually get sicker...kind of kills the star ratings and the prospective payment system is not really set up for palliative patients. Agencies with a large census can probably do ok as they have a large number of traditional patients to dilute the ratings etc of the palliative people. Many hospitals now are developing their own palliative teams which I hear can be very rewarding to work for.

I think you should thank your lucky stars that you are no longer with this agency. Surveyors have been through the process enough times that they are likely to catch what is going on...most computer programs leave a time stamp as to when items are entered...it's not just the time and date you put in. It will likely be obvious when all this documentation is entered at once. In any event I sincerely doubt the viability of this agency so just be glad you are no longer a part of it.