Automated, compassionate outreach that carries every bereaved family from the first week through the first anniversary: scheduled check-ins, sensitive date acknowledgments, grief content, coordinator workflows, and the CMS 13-month program documentation your surveyors ask to see.
The comprehensive assessment covers the family's bereavement needs, not just the patient. Bereavement starts at admission, not at the time of death, and the risk picture (low, moderate, high) is reassessed as the journey changes.
Bereavement counseling continues up to 13 months after death, and the cadence must reflect the assessment: not one size fits all, but responsive to each family's identified needs as they change.
If it is not documented, it did not happen. Survey expects proof of what was assessed, what the plan included, what outreach occurred, and how it aligned to needs over time.
"Most organizations don't struggle with understanding these requirements. The challenge is operationalizing them consistently over that thirteen-month period." Michelle Pickering, COO, Momentum Healthcare Technology and Consulting, hospice and home-based care executive of 20+ years
Every family enrolls into a 13-month journey of scheduled touchpoints. Each check-in is a short scored assessment, and the score routes what happens next: no one waits in a form queue, and no one gets a robot when they need a person.
If the assigned person is not logged in, the escalation follows them by SMS, email, and push; the team sees every open escalation and can take over or reassign; and the time from trigger to human response is measured and reported, which is the number a surveyor never expects you to have. Families who prefer the old way opt out into a manual process that stays tracked. Your organization's logo rides in every text, there is no app to download, and everything happens in a HIPAA-compliant environment reached by one link.
"Technology doesn't replace the human connection. It protects it." John Lovitsch, QliqSOFT product manager, from the bereavement webinar
The session behind this page: Michelle Pickering, COO of Momentum Healthcare Technology and Consulting, on what the Conditions of Participation actually expect, and John Lovitsch, QliqSOFT product manager, walking the 13-month journey live, with Bobby Weber from customer success and hosted by Ben Henson.
The family’s journey with your hospice doesn’t end at the death. Neither does the program, the documentation, or the relationship. Related reading: Is your bereavement program still mailing into the void?
The Conditions of Participation require bereavement services for up to a year following the death, under an organized program with qualified professionals. Yet most families never engage: they didn’t know it existed, the offer arrived buried in a mailing, or a phone call felt impossible. Text-first outreach solves all three, and the thirteenth month carries families through the hardest day of the entire journey.
A five-day stay creates the same 13-month bereavement obligation as a six-month stay. The shorter your average length of stay, the faster patients turn over, and every death adds survivors to a program that runs for 13 months after the census stops counting them.
See the 13-month journey, coordinator workflows, and compliance tracking run end to end, mapped to your bereavement program.
Yes. Bereaved contacts can be pulled from the EMR to enroll, and depending on the system, discrete data points, statuses, and updates can post back, so the bereavement record and the clinical record stay aligned.
Escalations route by rule to the right discipline, a chaplain for one kind, a social worker for another. If the assignee is not logged in they are chased by SMS, email, and push notification; the whole team can see open escalations and take over or reassign; and message timing controls keep automated touchpoints inside office hours.
Every check-in is a scored form, including the Early Bereavement Baseline and the CGS-5 v2, with logic behind each answer. Scores classify the response (for example elevated, high priority, critical), thresholds are tunable per organization, and the classification is what triggers the routing, so escalation is a rule, not a judgment call made at midnight.
Yes, at any time, and opting out does not mean falling out: they move to a manual outreach process that stays tracked in the same record, so the 13-month obligation and its documentation continue either way.