Circles of Influence

Organization:  Gilchrist Hospice Care (GHC), Baltimore, MD.   Innovation highlights were communication and coordination across settings, integration of palliative and geriatric care, and staff education, orientation, and mentoring.

Recent Achievements:    GHC had recently undergone a significant expansion of services at the time the award was announced. Within two years prior to the July 2011 announcement, it had:

• Launched a pediatric hospice program
• Opened a second inpatient center
• Created an open access hospice program
• Begun to offer a medical home for frail elderly patients and the chronically ill, particularly those in skilled nursing homes, through affiliated physician practice Gilchrist Greater Living

In the year since, it has continued to look for ways to both expand its program and to move palliative medicine further upstream.  In late summer 2011, it partnered with a local community hospital to begin offering a new inpatient Palliative Medicine Program.  The program is funded by GHC, which also provides medical staffing, and is the second hospital-based palliative medicine program spearheaded by GHC.

It is also currently researching the feasibility of creating a center that would address the many complex needs of caregivers while their loved ones are in hospice.

In addition, Gilchrist Greater Living has continued to grow, adding physicians and nurse practitioners and serving in a growing number of skilled care facilities.

Award Impact:   For the staff, the 2011 Circle of Life Award had immediate and profound impact, both internally (pride) and externally (recognition).  News of the award spurred media organizations and medical publishers to contact GHC to take part in articles or narrative tales about hospice care; a GHC nurse is featured in a hospice story that ran in the July 2012 issue of Ladies Home Journal and can be found on-line at http://www.lhj.com/community/your-stories/hospice-nurse/.  Ladies Home Journal contacted GHC after reading about its Circle of Life Award.

While the award process was lengthy and time-consuming, it was very valuable and allowed GHC to really examine processes and innovations that help make it extraordinary.