Social isolation and clinical safety are just two of the growing challenges hospices face as another wave of COVID-19 takes hold nationwide. As hospice leaders make changes to immediately address these difficulties, some are realizing those changes will become part of their long-term strategy.
Michelle Burris, CFO of Delaware Hospice in Newark, and Michael Lalor, MD, CMO at Trellis Supportive Care in Winston-Salem, N.C., shared examples of how they're reimagining their workforce strategies during a keynote session at Becker's Post-Acute Virtual Forum Nov. 16. The panel was titled, "Post-acute care re-imagined: How COVID-19 will change nursing homes, hospice for years to come."
Here is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity. To view the full session on demand, click here.
Question: How has the pandemic made you reimagine your workforce strategies?
Dr. Michael Lalor: We've changed recruiting and training processes. We've focused on the critical clinical functions that have to be trained at the bedside versus things that are more administrative that can be done through remote learning platforms. Creating those remote training programs have completely changed how we onboard. Additionally, transitioning into this time of year, so many organizations are starting their annual evaluation process. We had to completely re-imagine that from the prospect of not being able to sit down face to face with all the members of our workforce. When delivering those evaluations, we're going to focus on skills that may not have been in last year's evaluation but will now be considered from a performance perspective.
Michelle Burris: The pandemic has brought an opportunity that perhaps we would not have seen otherwise. Before the pandemic, our clinical team was resistant to embracing and trying telemedicine here at Delaware Hospice. But with the pandemic, we rolled it out and it has been extremely effective. It has helped us on the administrative side with flexibility with our staff, which is something we didn't have in the past. Our care teams have children in school, maybe they're in school, maybe they're remote learning, things like that. So now we're asking ourselves: How do we set everybody up so they can be successful, whether they're physically here in the office or whether they're working remotely?