SoutheastHEALTH’s Hospice service has been named a 2019 Hospice Honors Elite recipient by Deyta Analytics, a division of HEALTHCAREfirst, the leading provider of Web-based home health and hospice software, outsourced billing and coding servings and advanced analytics.

Hospice Honors is a highly regarded program that recognized hospices providing the highest level quality care as measured from the caregiver’s point of view. Southeast Hospice, established in 1986 as the region’s first hospital-based hospice, has offered quality, compassionate care to thousands of families.

There are more than 5300 hospices that participate in the Medicare program in the U.S. Of those, 318 U.S. hospices earned Honors status, and only 11 were recognized in Missouri. Southeast Hospice is one of just three in Missouri to receive Elite status. Award recipients were identified by evaluating hospices’ performance on a set of 24 quality indicator measures. In order to receive Elite status, a hospice must outscore the national benchmark of all 24 questions asked on the satisfaction survey.

SoutheastHEALTH Home Care Services Administrator Vickie Schnurbusch, MSN, RN, CHPN, said Southeast Hospice defines its mission by “not only providing excellent care, but also by providing guidance, comfort and support to patients and their families. This is truly a program that offers hope in the midst of stress and grief. Southeast Hospice recognizes dying as a normal process and neither hastens nor postpone death. Instead, we help people with an incurable condition live as fully and comfortably as possible.”

She noted that Southeast Hospice averages 475 visits a month and recorded 5,700 visits in 2018. Southeast Hospice served 421 patients and admitted 198 patients last year.

Southeast Hospice serves patients in the home setting as well as in skilled nursing homes in Cape, Bollinger, Scott, Perry and Stoddard counties and portions of New Madrid and Mississippi counties. The service also has a partnership with Perry County Memorial Hospital.

About Southeast Hospice

Southeast Hospice is a not-for-profit agency that is Medicare certified, Medicaid approved, state certified and accredited by The Joint Commission.

Hospice team members include an RN nursing staff with more than 100 cumulative years of hospice experience; a dedicated medical social workers who provides bereavement services for 13 months after the loss of a loved one; and 24-hour access to pharmacy, wound and stoma care, diabetic and infusion care.