Carnage at Our Hospice: One Year After Buyout

Strange Tony,

Our hospice is unrecognizable on the one year anniversary of our latest buyout.  We went from time efficient technology that met Medicare regulations to garbage in-garbage out Homecare Homebase.

An important element of Healthcare Services also is Kindred, and it's important that we invest in Kindred for the long term. And so for example, implementing Homecare Homebase, while an expense for 2019, it's a decision that the Kindred board made recently because we thought it would position us better for the future and enable us, as Humana, to attain the clinical outcomes and the clinical measures that we're striving to do.  So we thought that was a smart investment to make.--Humana CFO Brian Kane

Additionally, Kindred at Home has selected Homecare Homebase as the electronic medical record and practice management system for both home health and hospice. And we’ll begin implementing this system in 2019. This will accelerate our ability to proactively identify key clinical interventions while improving revenue capture and business and quality reporting.--Humana CEO Bruce Broussard

Humana made an investment in Homecare Homebase as part of its big data, artificial intelligence plans.  Who knew big data and AI were a euphemism for not paying employees for hours worked and miles driven?

On the clinical side Homecare Homebase is a time eater for nurses who say the system does a poor job of documenting decline and how the patient continues to meet hospice eligibility.  The system can't do anything without orders and scheduling.  Home health is scheduled.  Hospice happens.

Few experienced hospice nurses remain.  Some recall Kindred's effort to predict a patient's decline and death.  The predictive service index score was so inaccurate clinicians stopped looking at it.  On-call staff laughed at it and said, "that number is worthless." 

Who trashed our hospice?  It's been a group effort led by financial rapscallions who own 60% of our company and Humana, which owns the other 40%.  Kindred at Home executives will have a lottery level payday when Humana acquires the other 60%.

Kindred at Home President David Causby and Hospice President Larry Graham foisted Curo's bad technology and miserly staffing models on our once great hospice.  This wobbly platform harmed customer service levels.  Dedicated hospice professionals could not get the attention of anyone in the company.  Their issues and concerns went unheard despite repeated requests. 

Humana considers the home a whole new ecosystem, a distribution platform that no other insurer has today.  Kindred at Home provides the opportunity for Humana to bring integrated technology into the home.  Humana plans to use big data/AI to personalize care for those it insures.  I don't believe it after seeing how executives used our hospice data.

Data showed an employee drove too much, therefore management cut the mileage reimbursement rate (lower than the rate paid to other employees) as an incentive for the high mileage employee to pay Kindred at Home for a company car.  Translation:  The company (which gave patient assignments) no longer wanted to pay staff mileage to drive to fulfill those assignments.

Data showed our hospice had too much square footage, too many computers, too many phones, too many parking spaces and too many bathrooms.  The aforementioned areas were cut 50 to 75%.  They did add cameras to spy on the few employees left.

Data showed it cheaper to take away company provided cell phones so employees could pick up and pay for that personal expense (over $800 pay cut in my case).  Staff who desire a clear boundary between work and personal phones are unreasonable and not team players.  Company apps for employee personal phones have tracking/monitoring capabilities.

Humana's data mining has proven harmful and offensive to Kindred at Home employees.  If someone wants to personalize my care then talk to me.  Ask me about my dreams, my desires, my gifts, my faith and my heart. 

Data mining already produced impersonal decisions that benefit our greedy owners.  Heartless artificial intelligence will reduce hospice headcount past the point of no return.  When that happens, when the Kindred/Curo combination becomes the least preferred hospice provider, God will strike Broussard, Kane, Causby, Graham and our 60% owners where it hurts the most, in their pocketbooks.

Recall that as a 40% owner in a highly leveraged business in Kindred, there's a lot of debt impacts there that get consolidated below the EBITDA line.-- Humana CFO Bryan Kane

Retribution will come for the harm executives have done to our once great hospice.  They are responsible for the deep drop in customer care and destroying teamwork at our site.  It may be in this life or when executives meet their maker. They will atone for their grievous sins.

Anonymous