Strange Tony,
Humana's Q4 earnings call suggested our hospice may know about our new owners by April. CEO Bruce Broussard said:
...we are committed to advancing our plans to divest a majority interest
in our hospice business as we are confident we can deliver the desired
experiences and outcomes for patients transitioning for restorative care
to hospice through partnership models.
We have continued to explore various alternatives for the long-term
ownership structure of the business and have initiated steps to
reorganize the hospice business for stand-alone operations while also
making investments to improve clinician recruiting and retention to
position the business for further growth. While we're not able to share
details today on a specific transaction structure or timing, we expect
that we will be in a position to provide a meaningful update by our
first quarter call.
That means Kindred Hospice employees will not transition to Humana's richer benefits package. Broussard did not mention causes for clinician turnover, like not paying staff fairly for hours worked and miles driven. He omitted sorry Homecare Homebase which added hours of extra work (often done at home and off the clock), sent clinicians down senseless rabbit trails and made it exceedingly difficult to find pertinent information (as it could be in numerous places or not charted at all).
Humana purchased our hospice in June 2018 and promised no changes. It then cut the number of holidays by 25% and holiday pay by 33%. They jettisoned administrative and clinical hospice staff and instituted time eating work processes for those remaining. Our experienced hospice nurses left long ago.
Broussard admitted Humana had difficulty retaining hospice nurses they'd just hired.
We also reduced the number of nurses who attrit (quit) in the first 90 days of
employment in the second half of 2021 for the first time since the
pandemic began.
Before Humana destroyed our once great hospice we had nurses leave during the first 90 days of employment, mostly due to management painting a rosy picture and then not living up to what they'd sold.
Turnover went into the stratosphere in 2019. 2020 brought the pandemic which isolated staff from one another, making them more susceptible to torture from Mean Girl management.
What happens when management harms the quality of service while taking advantage of employees? Census goes down and down and down. In the earnings call Bruce noted hospice's declining volume for the last quarter and full year:
Fourth quarter 2021 home health admissions were up slightly while
hospice experienced a low single-digit decline as compared to the fourth
quarter of 2020. From a full year perspective, we have seen home health
admissions up low single digits with hospice admissions down low single
digits year-over-year. It is important to note that hospice volumes
have been impacted by the higher mortality rates driven by COVID as well
as lower post-acute facility volumes.
Hospice volumes have also been impacted by nurse turnover and lack of availability. Our hospice continued to take patients and overload the few clinical staff left but that turns into poor service and bad word of mouth.
Referral sources got the message that Humana did not care about serving customers. Hospice staff felt how little management cared for us. We saw executives focusing on enriching themselves while pretending technology would ameliorate the downstream impact of their greed.
While hospice volumes went down, margins remained robust. That's the money that does not go to employees. Humana's CFO said:
Hospice had slightly higher margins than the home health business, and those trends continue.
Four years ago a few of my hospice peers thought Humana and its financial rapscallion partners might make our hospice better. Some looked at Humana's retirement match and wondered how long before they would have such a benefit.
EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION: 125% on up to 6% of employee 401(k) contributions
Humana dashed any misplaced hope. I expect similar treatment from our new owners. The question is how much money did Bruce Broussard make on our backs? We may never know.
Humana has begun a divestiture process in collaboration with Goldman
Sachs, Axios reported Monday, noting that the information came from
three different sources. The process is supposedly targeting private
equity interests.
Lord, deliver us from evil....that I pray.
Anonymous
