Some hospices saw daily patient census rise 50% in the 18 to 36 months after rebranding

Tony Kudner, chief strategy officer at Ohio-based consultancy Transcend Strategy Group, told Hospice News that some of the firm's clients saw average daily census climb 50% in the 18 to 36 months after a rebrand.

For a hospice CEO weighing a new name, the 50% is the eye-catching part. The timeline is the part to plan around. Kudner was clear that those gains took investment in time, people and capital, and that a successful rebrand means weighing unintended consequences as carefully as the upside. Results like that come out of a multi-year project, and a new logo alone won't deliver them.

Services outgrew the name

The report found three common triggers that prompted a rebrand:

• Diversifying or repositioning services beyond hospice care
• Entering new markets or widening geographic reach
• Modernizing branding and marketing campaigns

Lagemann told Hospice News that the biggest driver, "hands down," is expanding service lines beyond traditional hospice care. As she sees it, organizations whose whole identity rested on hospice learned painfully that the hospice name had turned into a trap. Many rebrands, she added, reflect a broader idea of who counts as a patient in the first place.

Kudner points to a second pressure. Healthcare providers, patients and families often misunderstand what hospice care does and does not include, and those misunderstandings push many organizations toward a change. Taken together, the two accounts suggest a hospice rebrand can be a name catching up with a business that has already changed.

Name, story, lexicon, look

Speaking with Hospice News, Kudner said an agency can better match its differentiated position to what the market wants by adopting a name, brand story, lexicon and visual identity that more fully capture what the agency actually does. The lexicon is the piece people most easily underestimate. Putting a new name on the sign may not help much if intake staff, liaisons and the website keep describing the organization the old way.

Dropping the word is not the only option. A Cookson case study about its rebrand for Home Health & Hospice Care describes a different approach. The agency used a new type treatment that put "home health" ahead of "hospice care" as the main emphasis. As a result, the way the name is displayed now better matches the services the organization provides.

A lot of research went into the work. According to the case study, the team ran 4 focus groups and 4 surveys and heard from 240 voices across the organization. In a testimonial, Chief Operating Officer Stephen McLean said rebranding the agency was difficult, given that it has served its community for more than 140 years.

For an organization with more than a century of local recognition, that middle path has an obvious appeal.

Planning for the 18-to-36-month window

Transcend has been through this itself. The firm, formerly RP Marketing, rebranded in 2020 after 27 years of operation. Kudner said some clients saw 50% increases in average daily census in the 18 to 36 months following a rebrand, and that it takes investments of time, personnel and capital. For a board, that window suggests results could take time to show up.

One caution on the headline number: the 50% describes some Transcend clients, not an industry average, and no baseline census figures came with it. A 50% gain on a small program and a 50% gain on a large one are very different operational events. That makes it worth locking in the pre-launch ADC figure before the first sign comes down.

The case for keeping the word

Some in the field may see backing away from the term differently. A white paper in Palliative Medicine Reports sets out four components of a strategic approach for hospice and palliative care: publishing clear clinical and programmatic standards, making meaningful data readily available, driving quality-based competition, and embracing the field's authentic brand of expert care that fosters well-being for patients and their families. That last component could sit uneasily with the idea of distancing an organization from the word.

The two positions fit together more easily than they first appear. The white paper speaks to the clinical identity of hospice care. The rebrands Lagemann describes are mostly about naming an organization that now does much more than hospice. Cookson's client shows both can happen at once: the wider business leads, and the hospice service keeps its name. For a single-line hospice with no new programs to name, the white paper's argument carries more weight, and the case for renaming rests mainly on the misconceptions Kudner describes. For an organization that has added palliative care, dementia programs and adult day care, the old name may simply be describing a smaller company than the one that exists today.