Sweet deal for The Denver Hospice . . .

Kathleen Kenny Davia & Brad High, owners of Gateaux Specialty Cakes and Pastries are giving back in December by pledging 10% of all tea cookie sales to The Denver Hospice -- their way of celebrating Gateaux' 10th Anniversary. Need a treat or a special gift? Support these generous business people in our community while helping The Denver Hospice.  Give their famous iced shortbreak tea cookies, exquisitely packaged for gift-giving -- or treat yourself!  Visit Gateaux at 1160 Speer Blvd. in Denver or www.gateauxpastries.com

The Mask Project 2010 is coming...

The Mask Project 2010: Such an exciting event! We will have Mask Workshops in January, February and March. The exact dates will be announced soon. If you would like to volunteer for The Mask Project, you will need to attend one of these workshops to prepare for volunteering this year. New and returning Mask Volunteers will find attending a Mask Workshop very helpful and energizing as we prepare for the biggest fundraiser/community awareness event The Denver Hospice has ever done! We will need volunteers for shifts at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center through out the month of April; the Gala will be May 1st, 2010. If you haven’t already done so, please email or call Erin if you’d like to volunteer for The Mask Project so that we are sure to have you on our list with your current email address and phone number.

For more details about the event: themaskproject.org

Our Volunteer Dixie honored with special award

September 24th was "Dixie Griffith Day" in Denver (by proclamation of the Mayor) and we found that out at about 5:45pm that day! Dixie has volunteered with The Denver Hospice for many years and was honored on September 24th with a ceremony as the September winner of the Minoru Yasui Volunteer Award. This prestigious award is given to one volunteer per month in the Denver-metro area who personifies dedication, caring and helping others. The award also allows the winner to choose a nonprofit organization to receive a $2000 donation, and not surprisingly, Dixie chose The Denver Hospice as the recipient of such a generous donation. Dixie was honored and many staff from The Denver Hospice were there to cheer her on! Dixie shared with us that she hopes this award will represent all volunteers with The Denver Hospice because there are so many incredible volunteers serving our patients & their families every day. We say, Congratulations, Dixie! 

To learn more about this award, please click here: http://www.denverfoundation.org/page17842.cfm

Important Paperwork Coming YOUR Way!

Soon all volunteers with The Denver Hospice will receive a packet of compliance paperwork in the mail. It is very important that 100% of volunteers & staff complete this paperwork; it is a compliance and quality update that assures that we are meeting federal hospice regulations and updating & educating all our volunteers and staff about HIPAA, confidentiality, and other compliance issues that impact our patients & their families. Please keep an eye out for your packet coming to you in the mail in early October. The deadline for volunteers to read/sign/mail back their paperwork is Friday October 23rd.

Please note that ALL Volunteers must complete this paperwork, including special event/project volunteers, office volunteers, Mask Volunteers, patient care volunteers, and all other volunteers. 100% of our volunteers need to complete this important paperwork. We strive to keep volunteers as inform and involved in our quality improvement as possible. 

Thank you for your support of our continual improvement at The Denver Hospice! Please let Erin, Lori or Lynnette know if you have any questions or we can help you with this in any way. 

1st Annual Volunteer Picnic was held Friday August 28th

We had our first annual Volunteer Picnic in Creekside Park (right next to the Main Office building) on Friday August 28th. Over 100 volunteers & staff enjoyed the beautiful weather, fun company and yummy food. Thank you to all those who attended. We'll do it again next summer! An extra thank you to volunteer Chris who took these wonderful photos of the event...

1st Annual Volunteer Picnic was held Friday August 28th

More photos from the Picnic...

Lynnette Jellison is Employee of the Season

Lynnette Jellison, Volunteer Coordinator, was chosen as the Employee of the Season! Each quarter one employee is honored with this award for his/her dedication, going above & beyond and being a leader in helping our patients & families. Lynnette works with volunteers at the Care Center, as well as several care teams through out the Denver-metro area and 11th Hour Volunteers. Lynnette was awarded a paid day off, a gift card and two parties: one at the Care Center and one at the Main Offices so that we could all help her celebrate. To help her celebrate, Erin made sure she had a crown, scepter and roses to complete the look, along with a crown cake.  Congratulations, Lynnette! We are so proud of you and happy you are part of the Volunteer Services Team! 

Welcome to the July Hospice Training Volunteers

11 new Volunteers completed The Denver Hospice's required Hospice Training in late July! We welcome them to the wonderful group of volunteers who help us serve our patients & families, especially as our total census goes over 500 hospice patients daily for the first time in our organization's history! By having more volunteers on board, giving of their time and compassion, we can help more patients & families. 

Pictured here are JoAnn, Todd, Gail, Diana, Jane, Coleen, Tracy, Rebecca,  and John

Not pictured are Erica and Justin 

Congratulations to all 11th Hour Volunteers!

Thank you 11th Hour Volunteers

All 11th Hour Volunteers were honored this Spring as the Volunteers of the Season! Congratulations to all 11th Hour Volunteers! The Volunteer(s) of the Season is a traditional for The Denver Hospice to honor a volunteer or group of volunteers 4 times a year, with the seasons. 11th Hour Volunteers received a certificate and letter of recognition for this honor. Currently, there are 71 trained & dedicated volunteers who give their time and compassion to patients who need 11th Hour support. 11th Hour Training teaches our volunteers how to be with patients who are in the final hours of their life by sitting with them and other ways to support them. 11th Hour Volunteers help make sure that no patient dies alone. 

A special THANK YOU to our 11th Hour Volunteers. 

We are currently expanding our 11th Hour Program to more nursing homes, especially in Arvada and central Denver. If you are interested in learning more about 11th Hour training or volunteering, please contact Erin at ebeauprez@denverhospice.org

Who will be honored as the Summer Volunteers of the Season? Look for the announcement in the August newsletter coming to your email soon!

Welcome to our New Volunteers from April Hospice Training!

A warm welcome to our newest volunteers! They completed the April Hospice Training- Congratulations!



Back from left to right: Dory, Jane, David, Rhoda, Chris, Elliott, Barbara, Hillary, Matt 

Front from left to right: Kimberly, Linda W., Charlene, Peg, Linda B., Amey 

Not pictured: Emily, Trish, Tina

The Inservice on Dementia held March 19, 2009 was very informative!

Thank you to all the volunteers who attended our March 19th Inservice on Dementia, and a big thank you to Nancy Bradley, RN and Betty Rich, LCSW who taught such helpful information. Look for upcoming inservices on this blog and in our monthly email newsletter.

HAPPY NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK!

April 19-25, 2009 is NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK! 

We celebrate YOU- The Denver Hospice Volunteers who give your time, dedication and caring approach to everyone you help. Erin, Lori, Lynnette, and all The Denver Hospice staff salute you during this special week- have a wonderful National Volunteer Week and thank you for volunteering with us!

Join Us on May 21st at 5:45pm for the next Volunteer Inservice

The next Volunteer Inservice will be held on Thursday May 21st at 5:45pm-8:15pm at The Denver Hospice main offices. Dinner will be included. We will present more than one topic at this informative and collaborative inservice: 

Caring for Yourself - Tips & Techniques for taking care of yourself as a hospice volunteer, as well as to share with other care givers you know

Volunteer Sharing/Q&A - time to share experiences, stories with your fellow volunteers and volunteer department staff, as well as ask questions

All Volunteers are welcome. Due to room space, we will have limited spaces available for this inservice, so please RSVP by May 15th to reserve your spot: ebeauprez@denverhospice.org or 303.398.6248

Volunteer Inservice on Dementia was a big success

38 Volunteers joined us for the recent Volunteer Inservice held at The Denver Hospice main offices on March 19th. Thank you to Nancy Bradley and Betty Rich for their presentation. We will continue to have inservices through out the year on various topics. We hope you can join us- all volunteers welcome!

Join Us on March 19th at 5:45pm!

Join us for the next Volunteer Inservice being held Thursday, March 19th 5:45pm-7:30pm at The Denver Hospice main offices 7th floor. The topic is "Dementia-how to help our patients & families". This topic is back by popular demand! Light dinner will be served. Join Erin, Lori & Lynnette, as well as Nancy Bradley, RN, to learn more about this important topic. Just RSVP to Erin at ebeauprez@denverhospice.org 

Link to video on 9 News

9 Who Care Award Winner, Donna "The Cookie Lady" Portman, a Volunteer at The Denver Hospice

Here's the link to the 9News story on our Volunteer, Donna "Cookie Lady" Portman, who won the "9 Who Care" Award for February:

http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=109309

Donna's story aired last Friday February 6th during the 5 a.m., 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. newscasts and during the morning newscast on Saturday, plus 30-second spots will air throughout the month of February. You can also watch it by clicking on the above link. Her award comes with a $900 check which Donna is donating to her charity of choice -- The Denver Hospice.

Soon after the story began airing on Friday, several viewers took time to post comments on the 9News web site on the upbeat story. You can read the comments from the above link.

Please congratulate Donna who exemplifies what 9News says the "9 Who Care" Award is all about . . .

"We must be the change we wish to see." -M.K. Gandhi

Donna has volunteered with The Denver Hospice for almost 8 years at the Care Center, giving out homemade cookies and helping the CNAs. CONGRATULATIONS, DONNA! The Volunteer Services staff & everyone at The Denver Hospice is so proud of you!

Our CEO Bev Sloan featured in The Denver Business Journal

The Denver Business Journal's Health Care Quarterly published today is on hospice and palliative care. Here is the series of stories as text, as you need a paid subscription to read full stories online. The Denver Hospice CEO Bev Sloan, Dr. Dan Johnson, Life Quality Institute, and Kaiser Permanente are among those interviewed or mentioned in these stories. These articles will reach so many people the business & health communities!

Photo credit: Kathleen Lavine Business Journal Bev Sloan, CEO of The Denver Hospice, visits Jay and Mary Lou Brink at The Denver Hospice Care Center where Jay Brink was a patient prior to his death on Feb. 2. Hospice care allows patients with terminal illnesses to focus on comfort and family rather than a cure.

Photo Credit : Kathleen Lavine Business Journal The Inpatient Palliative Care Team is comprised of members from Kaiser Permanente and Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital. Clockwise from left: (standing) Dr. Kathleen McGrady of Kaiser Permanente; the Rev. Janet Barriger of Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital; JoAnn Cosentino-Godsil, a Kaiser Permanente nurse; Dr. Tim Collins of Kaiser Permanente; Eileen Warthen, a social worker at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital; (seated) Dr. Dan Johnson of Kaiser Permanente’s Palliative Care Department, and Virginia Gillispie, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente.

Denver Business Journal - by Bob Mook Photo Credit : Kathleen Lavine Business Journal Dr. Dan Johnson is chief of the Kaiser Permanente Palliative Care Department and director of the Life Quality Institute in Denver. Johnson says that palliative care allows patients to feel more in control as they’re facing the end of their life.

Here's the cover story:

Dying with dignity
Palliative and hospice care gaining acceptance
Denver Business Journal - by Bob Mook
Photo credit: Kathleen Lavine Business Journal
Pat Archer, director of the Exempla Lutheran Hospice at Collier Hospice Center in Wheat Ridge, says the focus of hospice care is comfort, not invasive procedures.

Boulder author Bart Windrum was so unhappy about the care his ailing parents received before they died that he wrote a book about it. And medical professionals in Colorado and around the country — sensing the kind of hurt and frustration that people such as Windrum all-too-commonly experience — are working to improve the way the health care system deals with death.
Shortly after his elderly parents died within 15 months of each other, Windrum self-published “Notes from the Waiting Room” in 2007. In the book, he blames poor communication with medical professionals at Florida hospitals for creating what he calls “preventable stress” in the last days of his parents’ lives — a process he calls “painful” and “needlessly expensive.”
Others agree with Windrum that there’s a better, more-dignified and less-expensive way for Americans to die. His book challenges the medical establishment to identify and address systemic barriers to treating terminally ill patients with compassion.
“Hospitals advertise to us they provide care — and they do it through happy-couple images, billboards and placards in the lobby,” Windrum said. “The problem is they don’t really provide care. What hospitals provide is bodily repair services under the direction of independent physician-scientists. The other thing they provide is nurse monitoring, In other words, they provide treatment and monitoring but not care.”
Recent studies suggest that many concur with Windrum’s assessment. And that’s prompted medical professionals to do some soul-searching.
According to a national study from Brown University researchers, the physical and emotional needs of the dying go unmet.
The study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004, concluded that too many Americans are receiving inadequate pain medication, emotional support, respect and communication with their physicians.
Among the findings:
• One in four people who died didn’t receive enough pain medication and sometimes received none at all, according to family members.
• One in two patients didn’t receive enough emotional support.
• One in four respondents expressed concern over physician communication and treatment decisions.
• Twenty-one percent complained that the dying person wasn’t always treated with respect.
• One in three respondents said family members didn’t receive enough emotional support.
• Fifteen percent of respondents said they don’t believe the health care providers had enough knowledge about the patient’s medical history to provide the best care.
A growing number of physicians and medical professionals agree that America’s health care system can — and should — do better. So more of them are working to improve end-of-life care so that the final days are more bearable for both the patients and their families.
Dr. Dan Johnson, chief of palliative care for Kaiser Permanente Colorado and director of the Life Quality Institute, said many medical professionals got a wake-up call from a landmark study in the mid-1990s. It revealed that patient families were increasingly displeased with the way the end of life was handled.
The Study to Understand Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatments (SUPPORT) showed that, among other things, about half of the patients dying in hospitals experienced moderate to severe pain before death, and many doctors didn’t realize what their patients’ wishes were regarding resuscitation.
It also showed that one-third of family members caring for their loved ones used all or most of their savings to pay for a patient’s end-of-life hospital care.
“I think that study caused a lot of people to say, ‘Whoa. Wait a minute. I’m not so sure that’s how I want to spend the end of my life,’” Johnson said.
The study fueled the rise of the palliative-care movement in the United States and a greater willingness to refer patients to hospice care sooner, Johnson said,
But as more baby boomers accept their mortality, there’s a reason to be optimistic about end-of-life care, said Dr. Jean Kutner, head of the division of general internal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
“Things have definitely gotten better even over the last few years,” Kutner said. “The future is looking better than it was.”
Palliative care gains support
Like Johnson, Kutner also cites the growing acceptance of palliative care and hospice-based treatments by the medical community and the public as signs that end-of-life treatment could be improving.
Palliative care aims to reduce disease symptoms rather than cure the disease because sometimes the cure can be harder on the patient or even more life-threatening than the disease itself.

Here's a column by Bev which editors apologized for trimming, as they ran out of space:
Caring from a distance
Denver Business Journal - by Bev Sloan Special to the Business Journal

If you live in Denver — the baby boomer capital of the United States — chances are you’re facing the challenge of caring for an aging parent or other loved one who lives far away.
Denver’s baby boomer population is 33 percent vs. the national average of 27 percent. And when you consider there are 7 million Americans who live more than 300 miles away from an ailing, vulnerable loved one, chances are, you’re a member of the “sandwich generation.”
Here are some tips that may help ease the path of caring for your loved one, particularly if they live elsewhere:
• Plan ahead before a crisis arises. Assess financial resources. Set up health care and transportation options. Get important documents in place such as a will, power of attorney and advance directives. Five Wishes is an easy-to-use legal document that lets you and your loved ones plan how they want to be cared for in the event of serious illness. The Five Wishes booklet is available at most hospices or through the nonprofit Aging with Dignity at www.fivewishes.org.
• Include family. Hold a family meeting with parents, siblings and others involved in their care. Discuss what your parents can do independently and who will carry out the rest. Maybe one sibling will be in charge of seeing that the right assistance is provided, while another provides financial support.
• Get contact information. Gather phone numbers and addresses of your parents’ doctors, financial advisers, insurance agents, attorney, neighbors and friends — even service people such as plumbers and lawn mowers whom you may need to contact.
• Create a file. Keep your loved one’s medical history and medication record in one place. There are websites, such as Google Health at www.google.com/health, where you can store such records electronically.
• Hire a financial planner. Meet with a financial planner to provide guidance for financial decisions, including assessing financial resources. Your employer may have an Employee Assistance Program that provides such services for free or a nominal charge. The planner can help at tax time and with bill paying, or can refer you to reputable sources.
• Automate. Set up online banking and automate as much as possible income deposits and bill paying.
• Hire help. Understandably your parents may be reluctant to give up tasks they’ve always done, but try to convince them that they’ll be able to stay in their home much longer if they hire people to mow the yard, clean the house and do home maintenance.
• Care for yourself. Long-distance caregiving often involves frequent travel and constant worry and can be emotionally and physically draining. If you don’t take care of yourself first, you won’t be able to help your parent.
Bev Sloan is president and CEO of The Denver Hospice. She can be reached at 303-398-6204 or bsloan@denverhospice.org.

Here's interview with Bev on hospice and the West:
Colorado and the West most accepting of hospice care
Denver Business Journal - by Bob Mook

Contrary to popular belief, hospice isn’t just where a patient goes when nothing else can be done for them. Rather, it’s a treatment method that may be more appropriate for the patient, according to the Hospice Foundation of America.
Hospice care is designed to enable terminal patients to focus on their own comfort and quality of life rather than a cure, so that they may live their final days comfortably and pain-free.
Colorado was an “early adopter” of hospice care in the United States — establishing the fourth and fifth hospice care centers in the country in the late 1970s, said Bev Sloan, president and CEO of The Denver Hospice. Medicare started paying for hospice care in 1982.
Sloan said Colorado and the West in general are among the highest users of the fast-growing hospice concept, which she attributes to the state’s high education level and progressive environment.
While the number of hospice facilities has grown dramatically in the last 20 years, Sloan believes that even more people will come to recognize the value of hospice as baby boomers face their own mortality.
She predicts that hospice care will be in the middle of the debate on health care reform in the next few years.
“We know the older people get, the more things fall apart in the health care system,” Sloan said, adding that hospitals often are poorly equipped to deal with people at the end of life. “Hospitals are places for good acute care, but not end-of-life care.”
Sloan cited a recent study from Duke University that shows hospice care is more cost-effective than what patients get at hospitals in their final days.
She said she’s concerned that too many patient families and doctors hold onto patients too long in hopes that the recovery of a loved one might be around the corner.
“The average length of a hospice stay is much too short,” Sloan said, noting that even in Colorado, the average hospice stay is only two weeks, when patients are allowed under Medicare regulations to enter hospice during what’s considered to be the last six months of life. “The medical profession still refers [patients to hospice care] too late.”
Health care professionals say one reason people spend little time in hospice is because hospitals want to keep them longer to receive full Medicare reimbursement.
The other might have to do with the fear of the word hospice, which Sloan attributes to Americans’ general aversion to death.
But those who use hospice or palliative care as a way to deal with terminal illness are generally satisfied with the results, Sloan said.
“We’ve never had a family said we wish we had this care later,” she said. “Choosing hospice doesn’t mean giving up on life. It is a different mind-set.”
Sloan agreed the emphasis of technology to prolong life doesn’t produce the best outcomes in health care.
“It may or may not prolong the quality of life and it’s extraordinarily costly,” she said. “Hospice is a more respectful option.”

Here's interview with Dan Johnson of LQI on growth of palliative care:
Palliative care bridges the gap between acute care and hospice
Palliative care bridges the gap between acute care and hospice
Palliative care is rapidly building momentum in Colorado and nationwide.
An approach that uses a multidisciplinary team — including medical professionals, a chaplain and a social worker — to treat people with chronic illness, palliative care programs are offered in 55 percent of U.S. hospitals with more than 100 beds.
The movement was launched after a 1994 study showed most people were unhappy with the way the medical profession dealt with patients who were near the end of life.
“The fact is, people are feeling out of control,” said Dr. Dan Johnson, director of Denver’s Life Quality Institute. “That’s the No. 1 reason people sought physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. We aren’t always doing a good job attending to the psychosocial needs of people as they’re facing the end of their life.”
But by integrating palliative care into health care, Johnson believes that patients and their families have more control and are able to make medical decisions based on what they want as opposed to what the diagnosis calls for.
“We don’t know all the answers, and we need to create a system that honors a person with an illness, not a body with a disease,” he said.
Palliative care focuses on reducing disease symptoms rather than on curing the disease (where the cure can be worse or more life-threatening than the disease).
Johnson stressed that seeking palliative care doesn’t necessarily mean a reduction of care.
“One person may decide to spend the last moments of life pain-free at a garden at home,” he said. “Or someone else may decide that every breath of life is precious, and they want to die in a hospital. We’d better be careful not to dictate to people how we die.”
Johnson said palliative care does a good job facilitating communication among patients, their families and medical personnel about how the patients are treated.
He said there’s no evidence that palliative care lowers the costs of health care. But he’s adamant that it improves the quality of care.
“We know at worst, it’s cost-neutral and probably responsible for cost reductions,” Johnson said. “We know that patients and families, when given the choice, don’t always choose the most expensive options. There are no indications [palliative care] shortens or lengthens life. Rather, it focuses on what your life looks like while you’re alive.”
Dr. Jean Kutner, head of the division of general internal medicine at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, said the whole idea with palliative care is to “provide comfort at the end of illness and care that’s consistent with [the patient’s] goals and values.”
“For some people, that might mean getting every possible therapy and spending their last days in the ICU,” Kutner said.
In Colorado, the Life Quality Institute has provided more than 80,000 hours of palliative and end-of-life education to more than 2,000 Colorado medical students since it was established in 2003.
The Life Quality Institute is a collaboration between The Denver Hospice, the University of Colorado Health Science Center and other professional organizations.
The institute was created after The Denver Hospice received a $500,000 grant.
Johnson said the organization is teaching future doctors a more holistic approach to dealing with people who are facing death.
“Every doctor knows how to assist with birth, but nobody knows how to help somebody die,” he said.
Kutner noted that Colorado has one of the highest percentages of palliative care-certified physicians in the country.
But despite the growing popularity of palliative care, Johnson said, there’s “no such thing as a palliative care Medicare benefit.”
“But Medicare will allow a nurse practitioner or physician trained in palliative care to bill them for the services they may provide,” he said.
Kutner said Medicare also won’t cover the cost of palliative care therapies performed at a patient’s home.
But Johnson said a breakthrough may come if JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) designates palliative care as a standard in coming years.
“If that happens, then we’ll see great changes, because it will become a requirement,” he said.

Attention All Bereavement Caller Volunteers

The Bereavement Caller evening has been changed: it will NOT be held on Tuesday January 20th (due to the presidential inauguration), instead it will be held the following Tuesday on January 27th. Same time, same place! Look forward to seeing you there! A big THANK YOU to all our Bereavement Caller Volunteers-they allow us to reach more families and help more people with their grief and loss. 

If you or someone you know would like to learn more about becoming a Bereavement Caller Volunteer, please call Erin Beauprez, Director of Volunteer Services at 303.398.6248.

The 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event

Held on December 3rd, 2008 at the beautiful Blair-Caldwell Museum, the 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event was a big success! Over 100 Volunteers & Staff Members attended and shared friendship, great food, stories of caring, and a program filled with appreciation for our wonderful Volunteers! Here are photos from the event:

The 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event

The 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event

The 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event

The 30th Annual Volunteer Appreciation Event