New Beginnings... Annual Report 2024
“Each
sunrise brings a new day filled with new hopes for a new beginning.”
- Debasish Mridha
Mission, Vision & Core Values
Mission
To gentle the journey through serious illness and loss with skill and compassion.
Core Values
• Unconditional Compassion: Compassionate care, partnered with professional excellence, is the heart of our service.
• Dignity of the Dying: We affirm the right of our patients to be treated with respect, and to be honored as unique individuals.
Vision
To bring comfort by providing the best care to our community’s multicultural residents who are facing serious illness and loss. To be the best workplace for staff and volunteers.
• Dedication: We are committed and privileged to ease the burdens and challenges that our patients and families face.
• Collaboration: Mutual respect, empathy, and trust unite us in providing care.
• Stewardship: We will carefully and responsibly manage resources entrusted to our care.
• Innovation: We will continually explore new ideas, services, and solutions to serve our community and position our organization as a center of clinical excellence.
Letter from the Board Chair
Dear Beloved Community,
It is my honor, on behalf of our Board of Directors of Montgomery Hospice, Inc., to pen this letter summarizing the organization’s activities in 2024.
Last year marked the New Beginnings chapter in the storied 44-year history of our legacy (one of the original) non-profit hospice.
In July, we welcomed Karen Brubaker Miller, MSW, as our new President & CEO. With her depth of hospice & palliative leadership experience, and passion for the work and the people who do it, she hit the ground running. In her first week, she held Town Hall meetings with staff and volunteers. In the weeks that followed, she conducted Board Orientation for new Directors and hosted her inaugural Board Meeting. And with an eye towards the future, Karen and the leadership team began the development of the organization’s Strategic Plan, whose pillars are, Employee Engagement, Clinical Excellence, and Financial Sustainability
August marked the 25th Anniversary of Casey House, our 14-bed home-away-from home inpatient facility. At the celebration, Karen was introduced to our community of supporters, healthcare partners, representatives of local and Federal elected officials, and one of the founding volunteers of our organization, Rev. Robert M. Braden, and his family. He expressed pride in seeing the growth of our organization from its humble beginnings in a church basement. At the milestone celebration, we were pleased to announce that the Eugene B. Casey Foundation made a $1,000,000 dollar-for-dollar matching pledge challenge for the Casey House Endowment for Nursing & Nursing Aides. We are tremendously grateful to the Foundation, whose thoughtfulness and generosity inspired $528,098 last year in donations from the community. Thank you very much to everyone who donated! The funds will help us to hire and retain the best nurses and hospice aides.
September provided an opportunity for us to commemorate the 5-year anniversary of Prince George’s Hospice. The milestone was celebrated with the hosting of a breakfast meeting for the members of the Prince George’s Senior Provider Network. THANK YOU
to the Prince George’s community for welcoming and trusting our team to provide the comprehensive care and support for which we are known.
Community Connections, our quarterly newsletter, was launched in the Fall to favorable reviews. The electronic publication serves as a space dedicated to staying connected to our community of grateful patients and loved ones, healthcare partners, donors, advocates, and friends.
And, in recognition of November’s Hospice & Palliative Care Month, Karen was joined by Mrs. Grace Critton, a grateful spouse, who shared about her hospice experience. They were interviewed by renowned journalist, Allison Seymour on WUSA9’s Get Up DC program. The segment helped to spread awareness about this meaningful and sacred medical service.
The year concluded with our community-supported hospice having served more patients (2,738) than the previous year, supported bereaved families and community members in a variety of ways, which included making 10,544 individual phone calls, raised a total of $2,296,757, and provided $1,278,110 in charity care and uncompensated services. Thank you to the community for helping to make this possible!
As we look to the weeks, months, and years ahead, the Board of Directors and leadership team will continue to be diligent in our strategic and operational efforts, to ensure that Montgomery Hospice, Inc., will remain a center of excellence and compassion, a place where skilled and compassionate staff want to work and community members wish to volunteer, and a trusted resource for our seriously ill and grieving neighbors and healthcare partners.
THANK YOU, beloved community, for helping us to fulfill our mission to gentle the journey through serious illness and loss with skill and compassion.
Justin G. Reaves Board Chair (2024-present)
Karen Brubaker Miller started her tenure as President & CEO
Held Town Hall Meetings with Staff and Volunteers
Developed Strategic Plan with the Board and Leadership Team
Conducted Board Orientation
Expanded Senior Leadership Team
Hosted First Board Meeting
Celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Casey House
Announced $1M Matching Gift Challenge for the Casey House Nursing Endowment
Interviewed on WUSA9 for Hospice & Palliative Care Month
Celebrated the 5th Anniversary of Prince George’s Hospice
Launched Newsletter: Community Connections
Gratitude Corner
The incredible comfort care that Casey House gave my mother in her last weeks of life was unsurpassed! At every level the staff are caring and compassionate and the volunteers that flow in every day to provide additional comfort are truly the best. Casey House is the gold standard of care and we are most grateful to everyone there.
The staff was truly awesome! They all had such compassion and took such good care of my mother. Because of them, my mother passed comfortably in peace and with dignity. I feel at peace knowing her last days were here. Thank you from the bottom of my heart Casey House.
I am writing with a sense of great gratitude and thanks for the wonderful services provided by the staff of Montgomery Hospice, Inc. Each of the service providers assigned to us rendered services tirelessly, professionally, and efficiently making my wife’s end-of-life care comfortable and without unnecessary pain and discomfort.
Treasurer’s Report
The financial standing of Montgomery Hospice Inc. (MHI) is stable and much improved in 2024. The organization’s financial outlook is positive. In 2024, patient census increased by approximately 18% and net income margins improved by over 10%. And for the second consecutive year, our investment portfolio had positive gains. In 2024, a new Chief Financial Officer was hired, and together with the Board’s Finance Committee, new President & CEO, and an expanded leadership team, we made a concerted effort to review operations to ensure the organization was running effectively and efficiently, and with an eye to making sure our mission, vision, and values remain our top priority.
As a community-integrated non-profit hospice, we were proud to have partnered with our referral sources— including the expansion of our hospital GIP services—to serve and support patients and families. And, we were honored to have helped to gentle the journey for patients and families with limited insurance through our robust Charity Care program by providing over $1.2M in uncompensated services. This was made possible by the nearly $2.3M we received in donations, grants, and bequests.
And as we looked to the future and the ever-changing healthcare landscape, we redoubled our efforts to provide skilled and quality care through the creation of a new education and quality assurance department to ensure our employees receive the ongoing training to provide expert care.
The Board and leadership team, along with our staff and volunteers, look forward to building on the successes of 2024, our staunch commitment to being excellent financial stewards of insurance reimbursement and donations, and maintaining the trust placed in us to care for our community’s seriously ill and grieving members.
Francisco Nugent Treasurer (2024- present)
2024 Statement of Operations
2024 Facts & Figures
Demographics:
• Service Area: Montgomery & Prince George’s Counties
• Number of Patients Served: 2,738
• Average Daily Census: 403
• Casey House Patients Served: 711
• PMC Patients Served: 180
• Number of Paid Employees: 298
• Number of Volunteers: 207
• Annual Payroll with Benefits: $24,452,425
Patients Served by Age:
Patients Served by Ethnicity:
African American: 395
Hispanic: 11
Caucasian/White: 2,122
Asian/Pacific Islander: 210
Bereavement Services:
provided by counselors with Masters Degrees
• 2,394 hospice family members received support through 10,544 virtual counseling sessions; counseling phone calls; and 5,000+ mailings; along with grief support groups and grief workshops.
• 350 community members received grief and loss support.
Services:
• Interdisciplinary Approach to Care
o Hospice Physicians and Nurse Practitioners
o RN Case Management
o Medical Social Work
o Chaplain
o Certified Nursing Assts./Hospice Aides
• Volunteer Support
• Pediatric Hospice (Montgomery Kids)
• Open Access
• Palliative Services (Palliative Medicine Consultants of Greater Washington)
• We Honor Veterans
• Freestanding inpatient hospice (14 bed Casey House)
• Complementary Therapies
o Music Therapy
o Healing Touch
o Pet Therapy
o Aromatherapy
o Reiki
• Education for the community
Reimbursement:
4.1%
4.0%
0.5%
Volunteer Services:
• 207 active volunteers
• 7,400 visits to over 920 patients
• 351 visits from Threshold Choir
• 287 visits from Pet Companions
• 236 Reiki volunteer visits
• 8 volunteer in-services to support volunteers
• 4 trainings for New Volunteer Orientation
• 80 Veteran Pinning Ceremonies performed
Board of Directors
Executive Committee
Justin G. Reaves, Chair Managing Director
Daniel Eke and Associates, P.C.
Christopher N. Palmer, Vice Chair President
MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation
Shobhana Sharma, Secretary President and Founder Environmental Management Services, Inc.
Dawn E. Doebler Principal, Senior Wealth Advisor The Colony Group
Angela Graham President & CEO Quality Biological, Inc.
Shady Jadali Relationship Manager CIBC Private Wealth Management
Aja Jere Jenkins Senior Director, People & Culture National Recreation & Park Association
Janelle Mirabeau Magnet Program Coordinator Sibley Memorial Hospital
As of 12/31/2024
Francisco Nugent, Treasurer Retired Chief Executive Officer Nugent Mortgage Corp.
Diane K. Kuwamura, Esq., Immediate Past Chair Attorney Kuwamura Law Group, PA
Karen Brubaker Miller, MSW President and Chief Executive Officer Montgomery Hospice, Inc.
Michelle Q. Profit, Esq. Managing Partner Profit Law Firm
Devang Shah, Esq. Attorney Shah and Kishore
Joye Sistrunk, CPA President & CEO Premier Group Services
Daniel Rutherford Wilson Director, Marketing & Outreach United Healthcare Community Plan of Washington, DC
Phone:
www.montgomeryhospice.org
