Home Health & Hospice Week

Home care providers scramble to implement emergency plans.

Florida has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of home health and hospice patients, and those patients and the agencies serving them were squarely in the path of Hurricane Irma as it roared up the peninsula Sept. 9 and 10.

In advance of the storm, many hospices swung their emergency preparedness plans into action. “Follow the evacuation plan and any orders which are issued for your area,” Trustbridge Hospice, parent of Hospice of Palm Beach County, Hospice of Broward County and Hospice by the Sea in Florida, told its patients living at home in a question-and-answer set on its website. “If you are planning to stay in your home or stay with local family or friends, complete your hurricane preparations early and make sure that your Hospice nurse/team knows your plan.” Trustbridge’s FAQs also addressed hospice patients in skilled nursing facilities and hospitals.

St. Francis Hospice in Titusville, Florida, told its patients of its Irma plan. “All current patients will be contacted prior to noon on Friday, September 8th to ensure they are secure and answer any questions prior to the storm,” the hospice said on its website. “Our answering service will be answering calls throughout the weekend, including during the storm, and we have on call staff that are available to answer questions. Our Care Teams will resume patient visits once Brevard County Emergency Management indicates that the roads are safe. We will call all patients as promptly as possible after the storm to assess any immediate needs.”

Avow Hospice in Naples, Florida stopped admitting patients and directed people to its social media locations for updates, according to its website.

“If you are a hospice patient or the caregiver of a hospice patient, please know that all Florida hospice programs have sophisticated emergency management plans to maximize the safety and care of their patients, and mitigate the impact of unavoidable service interruptions brought about by a natural disaster like a hurricane,” Florida Hospice & Palliative Care Association CEO Paul Ledford said on the Villages-News website. “Hospice programs have tested these emergency plans in tabletop modeling, and by practical implementation in simulated scenarios.”

A special medical needs shelter “sprang up” in the Sun Dome arena at the University of South Florida in Tampa, including a section for hospice patients, reported the New York Times.

Home health agencies and hospices worked hard to avoid what happened at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Hollywood Hills, Florida. The nursing home had power but the air conditioning stopped working, reports the Times. Four patients died at the facility and four more after evacuation to a hospital began, CNN says.

And EP action wasn’t limited to Florida. Hospice of the Golden Isles in Brunswick, Georgia, activated its emergency preparedness plan and evacuated its Hospice House patients to Coffee County Medical Center in Douglas on Friday, Sept. 8, according to its website. “Hospice home patients have been strongly encouraged to evacuate with their family members, and travel contracts are in place with other hospice providers if they have medical needs that arise,” the provider said.

As with Hurricane Harvey, the Department of Health & Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are offering relief to home care providers via waiver of certain regulatory requirements. HHS declared a Public Health Emergency for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Sept. 6, Florida Sept. 7, and Georgia and South Carolina Sept. 8. CMS is offering blanket waivers for OASIS data transmission deadlines in the Irma-affected areas.

Many home care providers still have a long way to go until normal operations can resume. It will take weeks to get power back to hospice facilities and other medical centers, noted the Marketplace public radio program. See information on applying for waivers for other regulatory requirements online at www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/Emergency/Hurricanes.html.