Helios Care named as finalist for major award

By GREG KLEIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

Oneonta’s Helios Care is a top 25 finalist for a prestigious award for innovative palliative care.

The John A. Hartford Foundation Tipping Point Challenge, sponsored by the Center to Advance Palliative Care, is a “national competition to catalyze the spread of skills, ideas and solutions that will improve health care delivery for all people living with a serious illness,” according to its website.

“We are absolutely honored to be included with Mount Sinai and Indiana University and all the other prestigious groups,” said Helios CEO/President Dan Ayers. “I think we are the smallest group on the list by far. There is one from Kentucky. Obviously, they cover a rural area, but we are smaller.”

Ayers said the recognition feels particularly special because a lot of it is for programs Helios has already put in place.

“We are unusual among our peers,” he said. “Some of them are on the list for what they plan to do. We are on there for what we have done.”

Foremost among the accomplishments, he said, was reducing acute care needs 70% among patients, and redirecting health care and end-of-life issues so they were taken care of earlier and without the need for too-late or just-in-time emergency services.

Ayers said the change in services provided by the group parallel its 2019 name change from Catskill Area Hospice & Palliative Care.

At funding levels of health care and human services departments, more emphasis was being put on encouraging long-term solutions for health care for the aging. With baby boomers becoming senior citizens, there is a known wave of older people coming that are better served in their homes and with their families for as long as possible, he said.

“I tell people in our business, ‘you have to find the wave and ride it before it gives out and then you need to find the next wave,’” Ayers said.

The shift has allowed the group and its employees to focus on helping people live in comfort longer, Ayers said.

“Now it has become a more thoughtful and delicate decision, that people can prepare for on their own,” he said. “It has become a pragmatic decision rather than a knee-jerk decision.”

According to the challenge, the programs are judged on how they:

• Improve communication skills and/or pain and symptom management skills among all specialists treating CHF, COPD and cancer;
• Improve systematic access to specialist-level palliative care;
• Implement a population health approach to identify and address patients with serious illness and unmet needs.

Gold, silver and bronze winners will be announced in October, but Ayers said being on such a prestigious list is already a win for a small organization in the Catskills.

“I could not be prouder of our staff,” he said. “We had to explain to them, ‘this is not hospice. We are providing a different service now. They adjusted and they have responded wonderfully.

“Helios Care has innovation in its DNA,” he said.