Hospice House Foundation may benefit from Four Season’s awarded $9.5 million grant

Written by Hospice House Foundation of WNC on . Posted in Hospice House Foundation News

By Travis Tallent
as featured in the Macon County News

Current and future Macon County recipients of palliative and hospice care recently got some good news. Four Seasons Compassion for Life who is the operating arm of the future Hospice House to be located here in Franklin, was recently notified that it would be receiving a $9.5 million grant for a pilot Medicare reform program on behalf of the Center for Medicare and Medicare Innovation.

Four Seasons is a non-profit agency that provides an array of services such as hospice and palliative services. It also just happens to be the only organization of its kind to be chosen for the grant throughout the entire nation.

“It is a huge honor to receive this grant,” says Derek Groves, vice president of Sustainable Resources at Four Seasons. “It will give as an opportunity exhibit our model nationwide.”

The organization employs a model called the community palliative care model (CPC) that disregards patient barriers like location, socio-economics, ethnicity, and fragility of medical conditions. The model uses collaboration and integration of palliative care into the health care system, continuity of care across transitions, and longitudinal, individualized support for patients and families. The goal of the model is to limit readmission of patients to hospitals.

Historically, the CPC model has been shown to improve outcomes for patients as well as the experiences of family and professional care providers, says Dot Moyer, chairman of the Four Seasons Board of Directors.

“Four Seasons is being given an opportunity to prove the value of palliative care, and not only to the healthcare industry,” says Moyer. “The patients and families we serve report high satisfaction with their care experiences. Now the high quality of care for which we’re known will become increasingly valued and more widely available, not only in Western North Carolina, but nationwide.”

In WNC, there is an estimated 8,000 medicare recipients along with their families that will receive the benefits of the project with 78 percent being assisted by Four Seasons and the remaining 22 percent receiving care from Palliative Care Center and Hospice of Catawba Valley.

Hospice House Foundation of WNC president Michele Alderson says that though the grant will not directly affect the local hospice house, she is still proud to have such a partner as Four Seasons.

“It is just wonderful to have great partners like Four Seasons,” she said upon the announcement of the grant. “This is a grant that they got to work with in conjunction with Duke University. They were chosen out of all hospices in the USA. This is huge.”

Four Seasons services Asheville, Balsam, Black Mountain, Brevard, Bryson City, Canton, Cashiers, Cherokee, Clyde, Fletcher, Franklin, Hendersonville, Highlands, Lake Junaluska, Lake Toxaway, Maggie Valley, Rosman, Sapphire, Sylva, and Waynesville.

The WNC Branch Office is located in Highlands and can be reached at 828-526-2552.

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