How are hospices responding to the COVID pandemic? Podcast with Kai Romero and Todd Cote

The vast majority of hospice services are delivered in patient's homes or other places of residence like nursing homes. This makes the traditional model of hospice care vulnerable in this coronavirus pandemic, especially in the era of social distancing and limited personal protective equipment (PPE). So how are hospice's responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? On this weeks podcast, we talk to two leaders of two large hospice agencies, Drs. Kai Romero and Todd Cote, to get their views on this question. Kai is the Chief Medical Office of Hospice by the Bay in California. Todd is the Chief Medical Officer at Bluegrass Care Navigators in Kentucky. It's inspiring to hear how these hospices and others are stepping up to the challenge of caring for both COVID positive and non-COVID positive patients during this time. Among subjects we talk about include: - The variability how this pandemic is affecting hospices in how they are responding to COVID (even if they take COVID positive patients) - Supply limitations (PPE, medications, etc) - The role of telemedicine in hospice visits and the challenges with trying to do some hospice visits virtually - How COVID influences prognostic eligibility to hospice - Special issues in vulnerable populations like homeless and rural populations Check out our new COVID page at https://www.geripal.org/p/covid.html for important links we talk about in this podcast as well as previous COVID podcasts.