Susan Ponder-Stansel began her career in hospice in 1985, when she joined the Hospice of Northeast Florida as a volunteer social worker. She was, she admits, naïve. “We believed that we could change the world if we just explained hospice enough to everybody, and then everybody would want it.” Early on she recognized the power of hospice to change people’s lives. “We changed lives because we changed the way people died. We changed the experience for their medical care professionals, their families, and their neighbors.”
Now CEO of Alivia Care, Ponder Stansel has watched the evolution of hospice and the increasingly important role it plays in giving patients the “dignity, control, hope and comfort” as they face their advancing illness and end of life. “When you give people some palliative care to run alongside their curative care, they get the opportunity to make better-informed choices.”
Ponder Stansel believes that to move from our currently dysfunctional system, with all its regulatory complexities, disparities, high costs, and poor outcomes, to a more equitable and patient-centered model will take “persistence and a series of incremental changes.” This issue isn’t going away, she predicts. “It’s on everyone’s radar, and if ever there was a time, it’s the next decade. I think we’re going to be saying, how do we do better for those with a serious illness?”
For Ponder Stansel, C-TAC’s advocacy and influence are showing the way. “The changes we want to make and that C-TAC is advocating are things that every single person wants and they don’t necessarily know how to ask for it. But we have this thing that they want. They want comfort. They want agency. They want to control their lives until the end and receive the care that meets their specific needs, honors their dignity, and respects their wishes.”
Real change, she says, can only come about by “continuing to make changes wherever you have an opportunity. There isn’t a single lever. It’s not an initiative or a new payment model or an action. It’s a series of things done persistently that focus on what all of us would want.”
Alivia Care is just one of the 190 member organizations adding critical mass to our advocacy in support of those impacted by serious illness. Learn more about our changemakers and how you can join them.
