Bereavement Professional

Our Hospice is moving from Allscript to Epic for medical documentation. We are building our Bereavement Assessment and Risk Rating process and wish to know if anyone has developed or uses a tool they like. We are a group of experienced BC's who have been doing anticipatory grief and bereavement counseling for quite awhile. Please let me know at your earliest convenience. Thank you.
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Ellen Hufschmidt

Essentia Health St. Mary's Hospice

218-786-1887
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Our initial survivor risk completed by assigned social workers has changed over the years.  When we moved toward our current home care and hospice McKesson system a surveyor strongly encouraged our risk to reflect the same assessment piece that social workers were using on their visits built into McKession so we adapted our survivor risk to mirror that.  Since then, surveyors have not questioned or commented on our assessment tools.

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Carmela S. McDowell, MSW, LSW
Hospice Bereavement Coordinator
Abington Hospice
Warminter, PA 18974
215.441.6841
cmcdowell@amh.org
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I have an interesting experience to share with our bereavement risk assessment.  We use Homecare  Homebase. The BRA is built into the system and automatically triggers a corresponding plan of care depending on the outcome.  We had the ability to modify the questions (all yes/no) and weight the answers based on severity.  It generates a score which translates in to "standard, moderate, or high" bereavement risk.

Here's the thing.  I do not feel that it is particularly useful or that it truly helps identify those family members at risk for complicated grief.  However, we just had our Joint Commission and AHCA surveys, back to back, and both were thrilled with what they saw.  They loved being able to see in a snapshot that a family member had (or had not!) been assessed, what the "rank" of their risk was, and how we supported them.

I don't necessarily think that a list of yes/no questions can truly identify how someone is going to grieve, or their ability to cope with their grief reactions, which is why I am reluctant to share our particular questions with you.  However, if I can help in any way, please let me know!

Chelsea

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Chelsea Johnson, MS, MT-BC, LMT
Bereavement Manager
TrustBridge Health

NCHPP Bereavement Professional Section Steering Committee Member
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This seems to be a widespread problem.  We, too, have been discussing and searching for a bereavement risk assessment tool, and we are using the Allscripts system.  We made some modifications that the system would allow but it is a poorly designed tool.  I personally have done some internet searches for some time now,  in an attempt to find a validated, peer-reviewed tool that can quantify bereavement risk and I have had no luck.  I have found a great many journal articles dating back into the 1990's (and world wide) that discuss the need for an assessment tool, but no tool has been developed as of yet, that I have been able find.

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Daniel Ogletree, MSW
Medical Social Worker
PIH Health Hospice
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