The Goals of the FHPC Diversity Summit:

Because of the projected growth of Florida’s non-white population, hospice providers must develop effective approaches to making hospice care more accessible to diverse patient populations. The following are the goals of the Diversity Summit:

Raise awareness and share information on issues of diversity in relation to culture/ethnicity/race as they relate to willingness to use hospice care;

Share best practices, model program, and innovative approaches to developing and delivering culturally competent end of life care;

Identify barriers, opportunities, needs, and challenges that are actionable at a state level;

Facilitate dialogue among hospice providers;

Utilize expertise and experience of businesses, industries, and service providers outside the hospice field who are doing related diversity work successfully;

Support and encourage the implementation of new programs, approaches, and ideas for working with and serving diverse/minority patients in each hospice program’s
service area;

Advance the practice and delivery of culturally competent hospice care.

The 2008 Diversity Summit will be the third offering in the diversity series, and it will once again bring together recognized leaders in other businesses and industries, who have successfully reached diverse customers. The emphasis for 2008 will be to provide specific tools and techniques that can be used by participating hospice programs in their own communities.

Outcomes and Impacts:

Outcomes to this point have been anecdotal, because data on race/ethnicity of patients admitted to hospice in Florida has not been collected before, making a baseline impossible to create. However, new proposed reporting requirements ask for race data as part of an annual report filed with regulators by all Florida licensed hospices. Having access to this data in future years will allow us to document progress made in increasing the hospice access for diverse patients.

Because hospice care at the end of life improves patient outcomes and is more cost effective for third party payors, such as Medicare and Medicaid, providing better access to hospice care becomes increasingly important. As diverse populations in Florida grow, and healthcare dollars decrease, disparities and barriers in hospice access become more problematic for our state.

Through the efforts of FHPC’s Access Initiative and the Diversity Summit, Florida’s hospices hope to find and offer viable solutions to decreasing or eliminating barrier to hospice care for all of Florida’s citizens.