Measures That Matter: How Better Metrics Can Transform End-of-Life Care | Part Two

Written by Chris Comeaux | 2/6/26 2:33 PM

Top News Stories of the Month, January 2026
What gets measured shapes how patients experience the final chapter of life. In Part Two of Measures That Matter, Hospice and healthcare leaders explore how focused, meaningful metrics—not check-the-box measures—can improve quality, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, and strengthen value-based end-of-life care.

Hosted by Chris Comeaux, President & CEO of Teleios, and Cordt Kassner, PhD, Publisher of Hospice & Palliative Care Today and CEO & Founder of Hospice Analytics, this episode brings together national experts to examine which hospice measures truly differentiate quality.

Featured guests

Bob Tavares, VP & General Manager, HealthPivots
Robin Heffernan, PhD, Co-Founder & CEO, Empassion
Mindy Stewart-Coffee, National Vice President, Palliative Care, Optum Home & Community

The conversation highlights a small, high-impact set of indicators that better reflect real-world Hospice performance—such as visits in the last days of life, live discharges and burdensome transitions, gaps in nursing visits, access to higher levels of care (GIP and Continuous Home Care), and patient experience, including the simple but powerful question: “Would you recommend this Hospice?”

A central takeaway is nuance: more is not always better. High-quality Hospice Care lives within healthy ranges and must be interpreted in clinical, geographic, and population context—not through rigid or one-size-fits-all targets.

The episode also highlights the critical role of Palliative Care upstream from Hospice. Earlier, multidisciplinary engagement helps align goals, manage symptoms proactively, and reduce crises and late referrals—ultimately redefining value at the end of life as goal-concordant care delivered at the right time, in the right setting, at a sustainable cost. Hospice and Palliative Care are not peripheral to value-based healthcare—they are foundational to it.

Great end-of-life care isn’t accidental—it’s designed, supported, and measured well.

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Episode Transcript

Guest

Bob Tavares

VP & General Manager, HealthPivots

Biography

www.healthpivots.com

Hospice Measures That Matter

Robin Heffernan

PhD, Co-Founder and CEO, Empassion

Biography

Mindy Stewart-Coffee

National Vice President, Palliative Care
at Optum Home & Community

Biography