New inpatient hospice program improves end-of-life care for Minnesotans
M Health Fairview is expanding its recently launched inpatient hospice care program to bring specialized support to more patients with terminal illness in our hospitals.
Hospice care focuses on improving the quality of life in a patient’s final days and provides medical, emotional, social, and spiritual care to them and their loved ones. This specialized care is crucial to many. While most people would choose to be in the comfort of their own home at the end of their lives, 60 percent of people nationwide ultimately pass away at a hospital.
Michael Ebbert, MD, an anesthesiologist and vice president for medical affairs, and Tammy Digirolamo, a quality improvement consultant and former nurse at M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital, found that most people who died at Southdale Hospital were on “comfort care,” a service provided when standard treatment is no longer possible. Ebbert and his team realized that hospice care specialists could help provide an improved experience for people in the hospital at the end of their lives.
Any number of factors could lead a patient into a situation where they could benefit from inpatient hospice care. Some people initially are hospitalized for treatment or procedures but never recover. Some are brought in by families who assume a hospital is the only option for end-of-life care. Some come because they couldn't get into a skilled nursing or post-acute facility — a problem made worse by COVID-19.
Until recently, there were no dedicated inpatient hospice programs in Minnesota to offer tailored end-of-life care. Our system is one of the first to bring this type of service to Minnesotans, with a pilot program started at Southdale Hospital in December made possible through our partnership with AccentCare Fairview.
“There's still a lot of care that needs to be done, even for a patient who does have a terminal illness,” said Ebbert. “The emphasis of our work quickly became getting the appropriate, expert care of hospice to patients on comfort care. Since we didn't have an inpatient hospice program here, we had to begin one.”
From December 2021 through May 2022, over 100 patients took part in the pilot. They were able to stay in the same room and keep the same core care team.
Most importantly, the inpatient hospice program has allowed patients and their loved ones to benefit from the engagement of two full-time hospice nurse-liaisons and a social worker from AccentCare.
“The absolute glory of this program is how much time the hospice provider can spend with the patient every day,” said Digirolamo. “I've heard stories about providers staying in the patient’s room while they did their other work, like documentation, just to be there longer because the family didn't want to see their loved one alone in that setting. It's just an added layer of resources that is really beautiful.”
Inpatient hospice care at Southdale Hospital has transitioned from a pilot to a permanent program, and the demand for and success of the pilot led M Health Fairview to launch inpatient hospice care at M Health Fairview St. John’s Hospital and M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center.
Ebbert hopes to see it across all M Health Fairview hospitals in time.
“I recently had a death in my family and hospice was just so helpful," he said. "It was really great, so I thought of it as proof of concept for how this can work better for patients and families. It makes me happy we’re deploying this to additional M Health Fairview sites.”
