NHPCO NewsLine Winter 2021 - 30

Bringing Technology to Enhance Care for Bereaved Families
When a hospice patient dies, the family's daily responsibility
of caregiving may come to an end, but many of their greatest
struggles may be just beginning. Between funeral planning,
dealing with accounts and benefits, handling the estate, and
much more, the bereaved can find themselves quickly
overwhelmed, especially while also coping with their grief.
Hospice agencies' solution to this state of affairs is
bereavement care, which agencies around the country
provide to the primary bereaved family member of each
patient for over a year after the patient's death. Medicare
has enshrined this critical support in its Conditions of
Participation, which require 13 months of bereavement care
in order for a hospice agency to be reimbursed.
Bereavement coordinators provide much-needed assistance
to families during this difficult time of transition, giving them
guidance and assistance to issues both emotional and
practical. The support they can give is necessarily limited,
however. Bereavement coordinators would ideally love to
provide round-the-clock support that is customized to each
family's unique situation, but even if budgets and staff hours
were not a limiting factor, nobody can be everywhere at once.
Luckily, thanks to today's ever-advancing technology,
24-hour, personalized support for the bereaved is no longer
just a dream. Tech innovations have greatly expanded our
ability to meet families' needs, no matter where they are in
their journey through loss.
Innovating in the end-of-life space
Today's technological innovations are unmatched when it
comes to providing on-demand solutions to complex
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Newsline / Winter 2021
problems. And while few challenges are quite as acute-or
as individual-as those faced by bereaved families, several
companies have been successfully applying advancements
from other fields to these issues, bringing customized
support to every family experiencing loss in the way that
they specifically need.
Among these is Empathy, a company that has been working
collaboratively with organizations across industries that deal
with bereaved families, in order to expand the care these
families receive in any way possible. Empathy's primary
product is a mobile application that was built to empower
bereaved families through a mix of technology and human
support that streamlines end-of-life bureaucracy, minimizes
tedious tasks, and automates processes involved in the
administration of an estate, while guiding them through
issues both emotional and interpersonal.
Because families experiencing the loss of a loved one are
often confused about what they need to do and afraid that
important tasks will slip through the cracks, the Empathy
app provides them with a personalized list of steps they
need to take, along with all the information and tools they
need to complete each one. Thus, families gain control over
their situation, and peace of mind knowing they are on top
of each responsibility.
The app also has emotional guidance resources for those
who need help processing what they are going through,
incorporating expert input from renowned leaders in the field
of grief. Finally, human support is available to provide users
both emotional and practical assistance, creating a hybrid
experience to help families navigate every challenge of these
difficult weeks and months.
https://www.empathy.com/nhpco
NHPCO NewsLine Winter 2021

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