For over 40 years, NHPCO, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, has set the standard for all aspects of end-of-life care, including bereavement support. Today, Empathy and the NHPCO are teaming up to raise that bar further—improving the care and guidance provided to families while elevating the professional paradigm of the top hospices that NHPCO represents.
When a loved one dies, the family is often left facing so many challenges, both emotional and practical. For those whose loved ones died in hospice, care teams are there to help them through this difficult transition. The level of bereavement support that is provided, however, can vary widely, limited as it is by the resources of individual hospice providers and by vague Medicare requirements. In the face of this, NHPCO has produced clear benchmarks, setting a national standard for bereavement support that guarantees the quality and comprehensiveness of the care its members provide to grieving families. This standard, which includes 13 months of constantly evaluated support, provides them with the care they need during the weeks and months after their loved one’s death. But the world is changing quickly, bringing with it newer and bigger challenges, and even the very best bereavement care teams often find themselves spending too much of their time on tasks like phone calls and data entry, and not enough on providing in-person support. At the same time, the technologies of today have created opportunities to serve families in more and better ways, adapting and advancing bereavement care to meet bereaved families where they are—and that’s where Empathy comes in.
With its unique mix of digital technology and human-centered support, the Empathy app provides the guidance and assistance that families need, no matter where they are or when they need it. That’s care that is available 24/7, whether they live in a remote area, or are floating back and forth between their home and their loved one’s, or are back to work and need assistance while on their daily commute. It’s usable by multiple family members at once. And it provides support for whatever the family is dealing with, be it practical matters like how to apply for benefits, or emotional issues like feeling like your grief is overwhelming, or all the many places the two intersect and make each other more difficult and complex.
The technologies of today have created opportunities to serve families in more and better ways, adapting and advancing bereavement care to meet bereaved families where they are.
The NHPCO exists to elevate and advocate for the hospice industry, the workers in it, and the patients and families it serves—and the advantages of cutting-edge tech in helping it on this mission are clear. That is why we at Empathy are beyond proud to announce our new partnership with NHPCO, further cementing both of our commitments to provide the best possible support to those dealing with loss.
By promoting and making use of Empathy’s services, the organization continues to set a new and higher standard for bereavement care, demonstrating that true support for families after loss cannot be fulfilled by a few phone calls or even monthly visits, nor should it remain exclusively (or even mainly) focused on the emotional well-being of the bereaved. Empathy’s app supplements and advances the reach of bereavement support, bringing it to families in many more of the places, times, and situations that they may need it.
Through this partnership, not only will NHPCO members get exclusive access to special deals and branding on the app, but they will gain a convenient, innovative solution to many of the problems hospice organizations face when serving the bereaved. The app empowers families, putting the tools, guidance, and information they need at their fingertips, which in turn empowers and elevates the role of hospices’ bereavement coordinators, who can focus on providing personalized, compassionate care where and when it is needed, rather than on tedious paperwork and routine follow-ups.
In the end, this partnership serves everyone: the families, who receive more and more immediate support; care teams, which can provide targeted aid rather than mandated visits; hospices at large, which can only benefit from increased satisfaction for the families their patients leave behind; Empathy, as we can reach more and more families at the time we can best serve them, early in their journey of loss; and culture as a whole, as we advance the conversation around loss, bringing death out of the shadows so that we can be better informed and prepared for whatever it has in store.