PDF version - National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

The Guidelines in Practice
Staffing for Facility Based Care
Our Facility Based Care (FBC) is composed of three teams: FBC-East,
FBC-Central and FBC-West.
We have long accepted that the care provided by these teams requires
enhanced communication skills (since staff is working with family,
facility staff and physicians); flexibility in work hours to ensure aroundthe-clock
attention; and a true commitment to building and maintaining
a respectful partnership in the care of the patients.
Shown below is the completed copy of Worksheet 1 for this particular
service line (this Worksheet appears on page 17 of the guidelines).
As you see, we entered our data on Length of Service and Routine Level
of Care, and then assigned a directional indicator (+/-/=) to represent
higher, lower or equal caseloads for the categories under the Staffing and
Organizational Models.
Factors Associated With Care Model FBC East FBC Central FBC West
Length of Service 101 108 121
Staffing Model
Admission Model +/- + +
On Call Model + + +
RN/LPN Model + = -
Shared Team Model = = =
Bereavement Model + + +
Staff Turnover Rate + + +
Organizational Model
Percent of Routine Level of Care 99 99 99
Access = = =
Aide/Homemaker Delivery Model + + +
Use of Ancillary Therapy
(e.g. PT/OT; art, music)
+ + +
We discovered
that much was the
same across
our three teams
On completion of the Worksheet, we discovered that much was the same
across our three teams.
We also found that the average Length of Service (LOS) for patients
served by these teams (i.e., 101; 108 and 121) was significantly higher
than the national average of 69.1 days as reported in the FY2011 National
Summary (Table 7), as was the Median LOS of 19.1 days.
continued on next page
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