Home Health and Hospice: Improving Family Caregiver Perception of Care

With an average census of about 250 patients, Kaiser Permanente’s Home Health and Hospice is a home-based program that focuses on comfort and quality of life for the terminally-ill. According to nationally-distributed surveys throughout 2019 and 2020, the Sacramento region hospices have been unable to consistently reach their goals in the communication with family measure of HCAHPS. For this project, we wanted to know what the communication needs of family caregivers in hospice are, and how can they best be addressed to increase SHP or HCAHPS scores in the communication with family survey measure. According to our research, the use of a comprehensive, holistic caregiver assessment and supplemental resources have improved the ability of healthcare staff to address questions and concerns of caregivers. Outcome measures for this project include SHP scores that are calculated by the percentage of answers that are “Always” to six questions in the quality measure communication with family. The higher this percentage, the higher the satisfaction of family caregivers with the care received after the death of the patient. As a result of our interventions, we have seen an upward trend in our national survey scores. Key findings from this project included understanding the comfort needs of family caregivers and the impact of those needs on communication with healthcare staff and quality care for our patients. In conclusion, we have found our research and interventions useful for increasing our national survey scores. As our cost for our interventions has been low, we are able to sustain these changes and share our resources widely with other surrounding home health and hospice facilities