Four ways Grief Coach (Help Texts) texts help hospice organizations support bereaved families after a death
At the intersection of bereavement care burnout and the rise of smartphone use, technology like Grief Coach answers a common—but previously hard-to-solve—question:
"What's the best way to support lots of grieving people with the least cost to hospice bereavement teams?"
Here are four ways Grief Coach texts help hospice organizations support grievers after a death:
1. We take the burden off bereavement teams by sending texts customized to grievers' specific losses.
"There will never be enough hospice bereavement coordinators to make sure every single person gets what they need," our founder and CEO, Emma Payne, told Hospice News. Grief Coach offers personalized messages tailored to grievers' unique losses, providing them with tips and wisdom catered to their experience.
With over 50 relationship options (mother, stepbrother, colleague, and so on) and 15 different causes of death (for example cancer, homicide, Alzheimer's, and COVID-19), grievers can receive targeted support. Subscribers can also opt in to receive texts about BIPOC grief, LGBTQ grief, and grieving a complicated relationship. With such a customized approach, Grief Coach is able to offer both general grief support to subscribers who don't feel comfortable sharing a lot of information and helpful guidance to subscribers who request to receive texts unique to their specific needs.
2. We make it possible to care for your grieving families from a distance, especially during COVID.
Because Grief Coach is text-based, it's available to anyone with a phone capable of receiving SMS text messages. There's no app to download and no high speed connectivity required.
“The texting capabilities provided by Grief Coach are particularly meaningful during the COVID crisis, a time when many of the more traditional ways of providing in-person grief support are on hold,” Bill Finn, president and CEO, Hospice of the Western Reserve, indicated on the Ohio-based provider’s website. “Our bereavement team now has the ability to offer personalized, text-based support to the thousands of hospice families we care for each year. This service adds a valuable new communications channel to the care we currently provide.”
3. We offer 13-month subscriptions, per the U.S.'s CMS requirement for bereavement care.
Grief Coach subscriptions can be any length. For our hospice providers, we are happy to offer 13-month subscriptions that you can share with your patients’ bereaved friends and family. The timeframe corresponds with the U.S Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requirement that hospices provide bereavement care for 13 months following a patient’s death.
4. We go beyond your supporting bereaved families by coaching their friends and family too.
Every Grief Coach subscription comes with the option to invite "supporters" to receive texts with tips about how to be there for the grieving person. These friends and family members get reminders of important dates (like birthdays and death anniversaries) as well as practical tips for being there for the griever.
Grief Coach helps you not only provide expert support to grievers; it also helps the people around them to pitch in and provide support too. And the impact of this "ripple effect" of grief support is real. For instance, Julie, who is supporting her grieving mom told us, "My mom is 3000 miles away. The Grief Coach text messages help me connect with her and understand the grieving process she's been going through, even though I'm not there to experience it first hand."
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To read more, check out our feature story on Hospice News' website called "The Rise of Tech-Enabled Grief Care."
And if you're interested in bringing Grief Coach texts to your hospice organization, email us.