Avow Hospice Inc.

For our hospice patients: Our ultimate goal is that people will live their lives fully and completely even when seriously ill or facing death. They will embrace all that life has to offer, realize the promises of their lives and die in comfort and peace, knowing their lives had meaning -- and that they mattered.For our child clients: Our goal is to help children who have suffered a deep loss learn healthy ways to cope with grief and heal from their pain. For our adult bereaved clients: Our goal is to help adults get to a place of peace in their "new normal" after the loss of a loved one. Many feel that life as they knew it is over, and they have no idea how to move forward. In terms of our organization, our goals include remaining financially strong, visionary in programming, independent, and continuously attuned to the needs of our community.

Purpose: To create peace of mind by providing compassionate care and support to those who need us. Focus: To sustain and expand our mission through growth beyond our core services. Key objectives: Mission Development- Expand programs to meet emerging community needs- Grow partnerships in communities we serve- Increase diversity of staff, people served, leadership including boards Operating Efficiencies- Remain compliant and transparent Financial Strength- Meet profitability and indirect cost goals- Meet patient care/revenue goals- Operate within board approved budgets Philanthropic Excellence- Meet fundraising goals- Meet goal for annual giving People Development- Create competitive recruitment and retention programs- Support initiatives that create a healthy workforce - Offer training at all levels, particularly for management development

We have earned a reputation as a caring, quality-focused, compliant organization over our 36 years of service.Our hospice program is quality certified by the Joint Commission; we first earned this accreditation in 2001.We create a culture that values and advances employees: this is essential in a service industry, where there is significant competition for skilled and experienced employees (especially nurses).Our executive leadership team is actively anticipating changes in our industry and potentially in our main source of reimbursement, so we can remain a financially independent nonprofit serving the community.Our board takes calculated risks to grow the company in new ways to care for patients. They understand the need for change, but also are fiscally conservative to protect our future.Our annual budgeting process is based on past performance and industry trends for growth. This gives us realistic but challenging goals to strive for each year -- and it keeps our management team accountable.We have strong relationships with our state professional association; our CEO is a current officer.In our community, we have partnerships with healthcare providers and associations that can help us advance our mission.We are active members of the national associations devoted to advancing hospice, palliative care, and children's bereavement.We have built a corporate architecture that allows us to expand services and protect our assets.Our board and management team make significant investments in technology for our campus and all employees, giving us the tools we need to work effectively and securely

We have successfully maintained our market leadership against a national for-profit with far more resources than we have. We attribute that to our mission focus and the consistent quality of our care. One of our long term goals is to expand the "extra" services we offer our hospice patients. We invest in them because patients need them, even though they are funded by donations. We provide music therapy, massage therapy, Reiki energy treatments and art therapy. In 2019 we opened Aunt Janet's House, a standalone children's bereavement facility on our campus. We have supported grieving children for more than 25 years, meeting them mostly in the county's public and private schools, and in individual sessions. Aunt Janet's House is a kid-friendly space with rooms to play, meet, decompress, and share meals. It also provides office space for the Avow Kids staff. Finally, we know from research that our industry is changing, and that we must adapt to remain an independent hospice. Avow and its competitor in Collier County serve the significant majority of patients who 'could have' had hospice; therefore, there is very little room for either hospice to grow without taking market share from the other. Additionally, we are bound by the limits of the Florida Certificate of Need law to practicing only in Collier County. We are also dependent on the Medicare Hospice benefit as our main source of revenue. We have approval from our board of directors to consider additional ways to generate revenue while keeping within the scope of our mission. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for our leadership and board to build the Avow organization that will thrive in the future.