GREENFIELD — A local home hospice service earned an award placing it in the top 20 percent of all similar services in the country.
Hancock Regional Hospice, an in-home hospice service, earned the SHPBest Superior Performer patient satisfaction award for the 2017 calendar year, an honor received by only three hospice services in Indiana, said hospice director Jeannie Crowe.
Hancock Regional Hospital provides hospice care both at its seven-bed hospice wing on the hospital campus at 801 N. State St., and in-home. This award was for its in-home care, Crowe said.
Hospice programs bring to together a team of physicians, nurses, social workers and chaplains to provide medical and spiritual support to patients of any disease and their family when treatments proven ineffective or the patient opts to let nature take its course. They work together to manage the symptoms and provide emotional support to those involved.
The award is determined through analysis of customer satisfaction surveys, Crowe said. All healthcare providers are required to survey their patients to learn about their experiences in that provider’s care, she said.
Hancock Regional Hospice’s survey contains 40 questions about how the family perceived their care in categories like pain control, responsiveness to their needs, the emotional and spiritual support provided, the education about how to be a family caregiver, education about medications and side effects and the degree of how the loved one was treated with dignity, Crowe said.
“The award is significant because it is an assessment of how our family members perceived the care we provided to their loved ones prior to their death,” Crowe said in an email. “This award indicates that our hospice team scored in the top 20 percent of all hospices in the nation. Only three hospices in Indiana earned this award. (Hancock Regional Hospice) is proud to be one of them.”
The SHPBest awards are given by Superior Healthcare Programs, an independent data analysis company with more than 6,500 clients in the healthcare industry, according to the company’s website.
“The annual SHPBest program was created to acknowledge home health agencies that consistently provide high quality service to their patients,” according to the SHP website. “With the largest (home health consumer assessment of healthcare providers) benchmark in the nation, SHP is in a unique position to identify and recognize organizations that have made patient satisfaction a priority and have been rewarded for their efforts with high marks on the … survey.”
