Hospice of Health First

Hospice of Health First (hhf) provides comfort care to the terminally ill and their families by furnishing pain control and symptom management across the Health care continuum (hospital, home, nursing home, and assisted living facilities), as well as educational and bereavement programs to enhance the coping abilities of families.in fiscal year 2021, as the global pandemic continued, hhf provided 106,462 days of care, a 1.2% increase over prior year. Hhf experienced an 8.6% increase in admissions over prior year at 1,611. Patients and families were provided a total of 7,992 continuous care hours in the home. The ongoing pandemic combined with variants and surges required us to maintain safety precautions and limited our ability to provide volunteer and bereavement services safely to our community. We were able to implement a phased-in approach and slowly resume volunteer services towards the end of the fiscal year. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Hospice volunteers gave a total of 8,171 hours of service to our patients and families. Hhf includes a field program, the william childs Hospice house, the cape canaveral hospital inpatient unit, and robust bereavementservices.bereavement services were offered remotely and in-person to approximately 2,200 surviving caregivers. This year, our bereavement team expanded services to better support community losses experienced during the pandemic, providing additional outreach to families who lost loved ones in our emergency rooms and hospitals. Bereavement services include support group meetings, one-on-one sessions, phone calls, mailed resources and the bright star center for grieving children and families.major program accomplishments include:1. Ongoing development and growth of our clinical support programs and services, including onboarding dr. barry simkin as the medical director of our community-based palliative care program; dedicated clinical charge nurses to support our field teams; and a quality assurance/process improvement team to ensure we continue providing top-decile performance to our community.2. Formation of a hospital-based admissions team, providing each of our hospitals a dedicated nurse on-site seven days a week to help facilitate transition to care, if needed.3. Community outreach and education continued to be a challenge due to the pandemic, but our clinical liaison team provided more than 230 educational experiences throughout the Health First medical group, our hospitals, community events and local assisted living facilities.