TRANSCRIPTS of Adoray, Sept 2025 Podcast

Before the Goodbye – Home Health’s Role in the Journey

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Pete Waggoner, Host: Welcome into today's podcast.

This one's called Before The Goodbye. Home Health's role in the journey. And we have guest speaker, Christa Walz, executive director of Adoray, home Health and Hospice located in Baldwin. Yes. So good to have you here. 

Christa Walz: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Waggoner, Host: We're excited to talk about this one, and I think there's always, with any topic we have within this, I think there's just a lot of things that people either don't know or think they know, and we can dive in and get going on this.

I think it'd be great. 

Christa Walz: Absolutely.

Pete Waggoner, Host: So let's just first, if you don't mind, start with you, what got you into the business?

Christa Walz: So I am actually celebrating my 20th year with Adoray. Wow. This year? Yes. Loyalty. Wow. Absolutely. And Adoray turns 30, turned 30 this year. Wow. So Aari is in its 30th year and I've been there 20 years.

So Heartland Hospice yes, they, we were Heartland Home Care and Hospice to begin with and I absolutely loved our name and when we went through the name change, I was very sad. But [00:01:00] Adoray, we've been at Adoray now for probably about 18, I think is. When we made that change.

So you've gotten used to it? Yeah, so I've gotten used to it. Okay. And I think, it's, we have the name and we have the reputation in the area. So I'm actually a physical therapist by trade.

And I had been working in the skilled nursing facility setting. And it's just a funny story.

My mother-in-law kept sending me a little news clipping outta the paper saying, there's this company and they need a, isn't that sweet? They need a pt. And I kept saying, no, I don't think that's what I just don't think that's what I wanna do. Finally, I was like, oh, maybe I'll just go talk to him. And Mary Tr Gruman, she was our, she's our original CEO and she, they interviewed me and we had one other PT at the time.

And we've grown, I've, I have a staff of 12 therapists total, and i. Kind of grew throughout. I grew with the company throughout the years and I've been the executive director for the past year. It'll be a year in September.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Congratulations on that. Thank you. Absolutely. So let's get into what is really home healthcare and when is it [00:02:00] utilized?

Christa Walz: Yeah, absolutely. So home healthcare is when there is a need for intermittent skilled services. A couple keywords. Intermittent meaning that it can be done once or twice a week, where they're not needing that daily care. And then the skilled service piece being they need nursing services or therapy services, physical, occupational or speech therapy services.

Nursing care for wound care, medication, teaching disease process, teaching, those types of things. And then therapy for all sorts of different things. Post-surgical, post hospital stay, they're weak, they're not quite back to their baseline, needing to get them stronger, those types of things. We see a whole range of diagnoses.

So this 

Pete Waggoner, Host: isn't early limited to age either. It is not limited to age. We actually, yeah, 

Christa Walz: we treat all the way down to pediatric patients. Right. We treat we have babies sometimes that are on service for home health services all the way up to the elderly population. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: How does one qualify? Or what are the [00:03:00] requirements that really say, yeah, this is right.

Yeah, 

Christa Walz: so really it's that it's the skilled need, that's what sets us apart. Apart from like a home care agency where it's more like the, the housekeeping services, it's this skilled need, so it's needing the nurse to come in or the therapy. And then the other requirement is that they need to be home bound.

That's the difference also between hospice and home health is on hospice. They don't have to be home bound. They can continue to go out and do their things in the community where on home health, they have to have there has to be like a taxing effort. So it needs to be very difficult for them to get out or they can't go out alone, or they can't go out on a regular basis.

Mike O'Connell: Both of my parents received home help from Adoray. 

Christa Walz: Yes.

Mike O'Connell: For wound care, physical therapy. Yeah. Because as children you just feel overwhelmed. Yeah, absolutely. And people wanna stay at home. Absolutely. My dad would say I'm gonna be taken outta here in a stretcher. Okay. And alright, why do we do that? And yeah. Who are the caregivers then? Are they, you said skilled, are they always nurses?

Christa Walz: Nope, [00:04:00] not always nurses. Typically a home health patient would look like they need nursing, and then that would be once or twice a week. And then if they needed therapy and then the therapy is once or twice a week as well.

Post hospital stay, they come home, they have a whole bunch of new medications. They're not sure how to, manage those medications. They have a new diagnosis. The nurse would come in and work on teaching teaching the family, teaching the patient, can they get them back to managing their own medications?

And then the therapy piece of getting 'em stronger, safe at home, doing that falls risk assessment, making sure they have all the arrangements that they can to make their house safe. Those are the big kind of things that we do. 

Mike O'Connell: Would you say it is. In coexistence with rehabilitation or is that something completely different?

Like for example, somebody breaks a hip. Absolutely. They have the surgery, they go home, they can't. Get out and about. So they're, that's one of the requirements. Yeah. Do you do like the home where they're, you're doing the [00:05:00] calisthenics with them to keep it? Yep. We 

Christa Walz: do the therapy. We come in, we do home exercise program.

One of the things, we, it, because it is intermittent, we do a lot of teaching. So it's teaching of the patient and then teaching of the family or the caregivers so that they can. Carry on in between those visits and then continue to see that progress. So what isn't a good patient is someone who needs daily therapy or daily nursing, like maybe they need daily wound care.

Those are the patients who would typically, we would recommend, Hey, you might need a transitional care Stay first before you can come home successfully. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: Is this the type of thing that's referred from the medical caregivers? Absolutely. They say, Hey, gotta have this. 

Christa Walz: Absolutely. But it also, we also get a lot of community referrals where we'll get, someone calls us and says, Hey, I think my mom needs therapy.

She came home, she's been home from the hospital a couple weeks. They never referred her. She's not doing great. She's not. Bouncing back like we thought she would, advocating very nice. Then we do [00:06:00] get a lot of people calling and then what we do is we just get in touch with their primary physician because we do have to have an order from the primary physician.

The primary physician certifies that they're home bound, that they have a skilled need. And then that's how we can admit that. 

Mike O'Connell: So Adoray at one point was like a. Combination of different venues that were the ownership of Avie. Yes. Is that still the case? 

Christa Walz: It is still the case. In 2013 is when the three of the four owner hospitals left the partnership.

So that was Hudson River Falls and New Richmond left the partnership, which just left solely Baldwin. And then in 2014, St. Croix Health out of St. Croix Falls came in to the partial ownership as well. Okay. So right now Western Wisconsin Health is majority owner. And then. St. Croix Health is a partial it's considered a sponsorship.

They don't own us. We are an independent entity.

Mike O'Connell: And so let's say someone doctors at River Falls. 

Christa Walz: Yep, [00:07:00] absolutely. They still refer to us.

All of our area hospitals are huge referral sources as well as the large hospitals in the Twin Cities. So Regions United are really big referral sources as well. Because if a patient stops at one of our.

Critical access hospitals, so our hospitals all in this area are critical access. And then if they need to be transferred to regions or United for more more extensive care, they're still a western Wisconsin resident, so we get them coming back, referring back over to us.

Pete Waggoner, Host: How do you work in terms of. Care programs with, let's say an existing doctor or, do you go back and forth? Make some recommendations from what you're seeing? How does that fit? 

Christa Walz: Yeah, so actually we we typically, we get that order from that primary physician and then we are continuously updating them on how things are going.

They have to sign the plan of care, they sign all of our home health orders. If they have another agency involved, they might have a. Home care agency [00:08:00] involved. We a lot of times recommend touching hearts at home. That's that supportive home care. They might refer to us and we work with them.

Other agencies that we typically work with would be like Inclusa, so they're the Medicaid managed programs. Yeah, we can work with any of those. Program.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Then I would assume when you're in home, you're probably taking the lead in terms of communication and typically here's what we're doing.

Yeah.

Christa Walz: Typically we do, and we just communicate with the physicians, make our recommendations. A lot of times they're looking for our recommendations because they're not in the home eyes on like we are. 

Mike O'Connell: Right. Do you ever like send out like a social worker to get a better grasp on, so something to do like an, I don't wanna say an interview, but to get a better picture than what medical records can paint 

Christa Walz: Our nurses go out to do that initial admission visit.

And sometimes patients look very different in person than they do on. Paper referral that comes in. So sometimes those admissions can be fairly long. And it's a huge assessment. Medicare [00:09:00] requires a huge assessment for that initial admission, so our nurses are very skilled in that and very skilled of knowing.

Hey, this is gonna be successful. Or Hey, we think they need more help than what we can give them. And then we work with the physician to make sure they have the appropriate level of care. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: And I would assume within there's dynamics too.

 
Christa Walz: Oh, absolutely. Like 

Pete Waggoner, Host: psychological dynamics. Absolutely.

Yeah. That your group is working through. What would you say is some of the biggest challenges in that regard that maybe people wouldn't recognize that you're most proud of? 

Christa Walz: So I think one of the things I'm most proud of is with a Adoray, being a nonprofit, we can do a little bit more. We offer a little bit more services that typically other places wouldn't offer.

And it's really unique that we have home health, palliative care and hospice care services. And so we're able to I would say be a little bit more patient and trying to get those resources in. Actually social [00:10:00] worker visits aren't typically covered and we still provide those.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So we have the way home health is reimbursed is very interesting. You get one lump sum based on the patient diagnosis and our assessment, and then it goes into this. It's a very complex score that comes out, and that's how Medicare determines how to pay us. So they give us a little chunk of money, and then we are to provide services.

So we provide services if they need 20 visits or 10 visits, and you still get the same amount of money. So I think that's what's really unique about ad Adoray too and being the nonprofit is we are very focused on the patient first.

Pete Waggoner, Host: That's fantastic.

 
Mike O'Connell: Yeah, I would imagine you have people like me.

So like you've got the patient and you've got hipaa, right? Yep. And so the patient, I'll think of my dad or my mom saying I just want this and that, and then I'm saying, Hey, could you come here a. And then you've got family trying to tell you something [00:11:00] more, but not in front of their parents.

Yes. You get that dynamic a lot too. It Yes, we do. 

Christa Walz: Yeah. Yeah, we do. It can be challenging and one of the things that we just always wanna make sure is that the patient is comfortable with us. Talking to family. Sure. We make sure that, someone's listed in the chart. That can be the healthcare can be discussed with

Mike O'Connell: across the ethical lines.

Yeah, 

Christa Walz: absolutely. And then also looking at are they still their own person or has their power of attorney been activated? And who is responsible for making those healthcare decisions? 

Mike O'Connell: Yeah. Do you ever have to play Judge Judy and like, are you too?

Christa Walz: We do. We do have some interesting dynamics sometimes in the home and that can be really challenging too.
And that can be challenging for our therapists and our clinicians.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Yeah, I would think so. Did, is this can this really withhold someone or prolong their need to have to go to a nursing home? 

Christa Walz: Oh, absolutely. I think it can. One thing to remember is that it's that we're that intermittent skilled care, so it's not like we're there every day eyes on, [00:12:00] but I think one of the benefits of it is we can come in with the professional eyes and we can say, Hey.

This is what you're gonna need to help keep you here longer. Hey, you're, let's get you all living on the same level. Many times we have these homes where they're on multiple levels, which can be a huge fall risk as we age. Let's get you set up all on this main level. Let's get you equipment that you need.

Let's make sure your medications are correct, make sure you're taking them correctly. Those are all things that can prevent. People from, first of all, going into the hospital. 'cause no one likes to go into the hospital and then also help keep them in their home longer. Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Which I think everybody wants.

Christa Walz: Absolutely 

Pete Waggoner, Host: Do you find that with intermittent that. It allows the people that are at home being cared for a little bit of space to work their journey too. Oh, yes. And give them some independence. 

Christa Walz: Yes. Yeah. Because about the care 

Pete Waggoner, Host: they need. 

Christa Walz: Yes. Because it is about them and it is about them buying into, is this gonna keep me [00:13:00] here?

How am I gonna get better? So yeah it is very. I think that's what's unique about it, and I think that's why I've loved being in this field for so many years is meeting 'em where they are in their homes.

Mike O'Connell: It gives you so many benefits. I'm trying figure out why she looked at me when she said as we get older Yeah, I know.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Don't think, I didn't notice. Yeah. 

Mike O'Connell: What other resources does Adoray have in that home health besides physical therapy? Besides skilled nursing I know you have other things too that you can offer too, right? Yeah, 

Christa Walz: so we have occupational therapy as well, and then if they needed speech therapy and then we would bring if they needed a social worker, we could have a social worker come in.

Sometimes they need more resources. We can help them get set up with county resources if they qualify for county resources. So we work. Really closely with the A DRC in the different counties. We can help them get set up with a supportive home care agencies. Our social workers are really good at working that, that can be really challenging too.

That home care is private pay [00:14:00] unless patients have like the long-term care insurance or if they're a veteran. So that can be really challenging too. Is making that. Step to, okay, you're doing pretty good, but you could use a little bit more care on the in-between days when we are not here, when your children aren't here.

That type of thing. That's a very difficult conversation sometimes to have. 

Mike O'Connell: Is there an average, like once a week, twice a week that home health. It visits the house or is it, I know it depends on the situation. On average it does, yeah, 

Christa Walz: it does depend on the situation. So if it's a wound care patient, we are typically there two to three times a week for that wound care.

Oftentimes they're at a wound center one time a week, and then our nurse visits. Two times a week and we have a wound care specialist on staff atter array. And then if it's someone who has nursing and therapy, typically the PT is in once a week and so is the ot. So they could have anywhere three to five visits from Wow.

Adoray during the week's time. Is, 

Mike O'Connell: You mentioned the wound therapy. That's what my parents were part of that. 

[00:15:00] Is that something that's more and more that's, or was that always been like that for 30 years ago? Or is that something that's really gotten some traction?

 
Christa Walz: It's. It's always been there.

I think that they make such great advances all the time in wound care. We have use of the wound vacs now and things like that. We the dressings have come a long way where. They can be on for more days than just being changed every day. So there's great advancements that have been made in wound care.

So 

awareness and advancements. Yeah. 

And our wound care specialist, she really stays up to date on that. She's very skilled in that and helps make recommendations to the physician if she thinks something needs to be changed. If it's something's not healing correctly, she'll make recommendations.

Mike O'Connell: And you mentioned, maybe, I just wanna hear it again, is so like when there is care. Sometimes it's covered by Medicare, sometimes Medicaid. Sometimes a third party insurance. Yes. Or it could be a private pay, right? 

Christa Walz: Yes. Home health services, if they have traditional Medicare, it [00:16:00] is covered 100%.

There is no copay to the patient. If they have a Medicare Advantage plan, it's typically covered 100%. The advantage plans sometimes have copays back to the patient. And then we have to be contracted with those advantage plans, that's the challenge.

And those advantage plans are coming out in full force and getting a little bit more we still see a very high percentage of just traditional Medicare, which covers everything a hundred percent.

Medicaid also covers patients a hundred percent. And then we contract, we have young patients who are not. Eligible for Medicare yet. So we contract with health insurance companies as well. We do not do private pay. Our, all of our services are, because it's that skilled piece, they're they're covered by insurance. Okay.

Mike O'Connell: This question isn't political. I mean, it sounds like it is, but with, you hear all this stuff on the news with different cuts and all that, has your budget been affected by. Medicaid or [00:17:00] Medicare reimbursements over the last five years or so? Over? 

Oh, 

Christa Walz: absolutely.

Mike O'Connell: Okay.

Christa Walz: The payment model for home health services through Medicare continues to change every single year. And three years ago we went to a value-based model, so it's value-based purchasing model. And what they have started to do is reimburse us based on our quality scores that we have as an agency, and our quality scores come from.

Our patient assessment, how good we do at getting them better in those different scores. It's a huge assessment. How do we make them better at getting in and out of bed? How do we improve their walking? How do we improve their bathing? How do we improve them taking their medication? So we do a baseline score at beginning and end.

That goes into our quality scores. And then every patient who's on home health gets an hcaps survey. They get a patient survey through me, Medicare at the end of service, and then those scores [00:18:00] go in and then that determines our payment. 

And they do either a increase in payment or they will do a decrease in payment if your scores aren't adding up.

Correct. If they're not high enough,

Pete Waggoner, Host: that sounds to me like the mother of all formulas.

Christa Walz: It's absolutely terrible. Yeah, I can only imagine. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: So you don't really, there's not really a guarantee here, is what you're saying, right? Is that fair to say?

Christa Walz: So Medicare in 1998.

Went to the, they changed the complete payment model and in Wisconsin over 40% of the agencies closed almost immediately because it was a PPS, it was a different type of payment, and they cut the payment so significantly that agencies couldn't stay afloat. 

That is when Adoray brainstormed and came up with Treasures from the Heart.

We just opened our fourth thrift store in Menominee. So we have four thrift stores spread throughout our service area to help a hundred percent of the funds from those thrift stores go to [00:19:00] help support Adoray. That was a direct reflection of that payment change and that's what helped allow us to keep our home health program.

Home health. It's very difficult to get past that bottom line. It's very difficult to get out of the red. So with that and then with a, corroboration between all of our services, we're able to, I can only 

Mike O'Connell: imagine every year your job, I know is tougher and 

Pete Waggoner, Host: tougher. Absolute. As executive director, all that's falling on your shoulders too, right?
Because you're running the business basically. Absolutely. 

Christa Walz: And. They have not touched the way hospice is paid. Since its inception in the eighties. Wow. So it's has not been touched yet. Yes. And that is what is scaring everyone. And that's where we're needing to start to be innovative and creative in different ways.

They tried to do it a few years back and it did not go well. It didn't pass. And this is why it's really important too, like we have state association I'm part of a [00:20:00] national association for nonprofits. I'm part of a Wisconsin collaborative. There's six of us, six nonprofits throughout the state of Wisconsin to collaborate together.

It's really important because then we have advocates that go to the legislature for us and fight for those different things all the time. So every year Medicare tries to cut the home health. Payment by 6% to 8% every single year when we can barely make it with what we have 

Pete Waggoner, Host: probably guess is our, it seems our society is aging every year.

The need for home health just 

Mike O'Connell: increases tenfold. The problem I see with that too is that yes, they want to cut you six to 8%. 
Bet the nurses and therapists and admin and all that, they expect that much on a raise. Absolutely. Right on. And the rent, the insurance, all those don't go back because you're Oh, because the cost 

Christa Walz: of living just continues to go up too.

Mike O'Connell: So sustainability becomes a question. Yeah. And so the brainstorming of Yeah. Treasures of the Heart was, yeah. 

You wouldn't be here today talking about it. No. We would [00:21:00] not 

Christa Walz: be here without having our treasures from the heart stores. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And 

Mike O'Connell: that's why, to be honest too, I always.

Tell people, push people a little bit, but say, memorial's lottery would be nice too. 

Christa Walz: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know's a little 

Mike O'Connell: bit, but I think to me anyway, a little bit helps. Yeah. Than nothing. 

Christa Walz: We're the only nonprofit hospice agency in western Wisconsin that's the thing.

And when we talk about we want to try to. It's, it makes a difference to people too. Whether we're for-profit or non-profit. Yeah. And I think that people can determine where they wanna have their healthcare from. We also have extremely high quality scores. Our home health is sitting at a five star agency.

That's the highest you can be. In both our quality scores and our patient rated scores. Congrats. Thank you. Very

 
Pete Waggoner, Host: good. So how does hospice and home health work hand in hand? Or do they? Absolutely. 

Christa Walz: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So on a monthly basis pretty much 30 to 50% of our hospice admissions are coming from our home health department.

Oh. Or within our palliative, because we do have [00:22:00] ary. Yeah. Yep. We do have a palliative care program as well that's newer. We've only had palliative care for three years. But it, it helps to keep them within our circle of care. They're coming off of home health. They've been declining and they're ready for hospice and we can transition 'em.

Really? It's a nice thing, isn't it, into hospice? 'cause you know everything. 

Wow.

No, sometimes they transition to palliative care and sometimes they just transition right to hospice.

Mike O'Connell: For those listening, what is palliative care? 

Christa Walz: So palliative care is for that in-between patient who's maybe not quite ready for hospice.

Maybe they're, they've graduated from home health. They don't need that weekly care, but they still need that kind of eyes on for symptom management. Help with advanced care planning, when are they ready to make that decision to go to Haas? This, it's a very difficult decision.

And our nurse practitioner, she goes out she tailors it to each patient, whether it's a monthly visit or every two months, or sometimes it's, two times a month where she [00:23:00] goes to see the patient. If a patient is, has cancer and is still seeking curative treatment, they can be on our palliative care program where we can keep an eye on 'em, make sure their symptoms are managed, and then when they're ready to transition to hospice, it's a really great transition.

Very smoothly. 

Mike O'Connell: Yeah. That's really cool that you have all three of those kind of steps. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: We know everything and every industry is changing, so are you gonna have some form of AI treatment? I'm kidding. But where do you see the future of home healthcare looking like? 

Christa Walz: Yeah, so I, I think it's just challenging with all the different payment changes that continue to arise.

One of the things that we need to stay focused on is having great quality and being able to provide for our patients. And that is, going to the payers and having payer contracts. One of the things that they're saying is having a palliative care. Program is gonna be really important in the future.

It's not the payment for it is absolutely horrendous. It's even worse than home [00:24:00] health. But we do it for community needs basis, not for that we're getting any payment for it. Palliative is really important for being able to support your community needs as well. 

Mike O'Connell: Probably something a for-profit company wouldn't do, right?

Correct. Because that's why would you do it. If you're not making money, you typically 

Christa Walz: aren't gonna see any for-profits doing palliative care. '

Mike O'Connell: cause it doesn't pay, doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. 

Christa Walz: Absolutely. 

Mike O'Connell: I'm, go back what Pete said. Is there anything AI, that you do use in your industry?

Pete Waggoner, Host: I mean, I said it in Jess, but I was wondering what is it we do?

We do, and ai, AI 

Christa Walz: is such a buzzword right now. That's to throw it up. But we do actually. So we just, we have a, we, our coding agency. 

For our home health coding. So all of our home health charts have to go through coding and oasis review. And we actually just recently went with a company, it's a Wisconsin based, Wisconsin developed company that uses.

AI to do the first scrub through of the chart and does the coding through the use of ai, and then it [00:25:00] goes to human coders to iron everything out. And it's great. It has been it saves us time and it's probably 

Pete Waggoner, Host: pretty accurate too.

Christa Walz: It's really good. I mean's it's been going and they're, this getting, they're growing.

They're getting a little bigger each time. But we use ai. For part of our back office stuff. So the referral comes in and AI does a little scrub, does a little summary that goes to our enrollment team so they can see what the needs are and then AI will pull out the patient information and upload it to our EMR to our electronic medical records.

Those are a couple of the things. Really, I'll tell you where my staff. Wants AI to be, but we're not quite there yet. But they want AI to listen to their visit and create their notes for them. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: Wow. I, you know what? Don't blame 'em one bit there. Right. I

 
Christa Walz: will say there are some physicians that are using it's called Dax.

Very expensive product, but they turn their phone on and then they dictate as the visit goes along. I think it'll be making [00:26:00] advancements all the time, but it's a little, you have to be cautious privacy issue too, right? Yeah. You have to be cautious. You have to be really cautious about that.

And you also have to be really cautious of making sure that the clinical aspect is staying in it. I mean, you have trained clinical practitioners that you know that. It AI is not gonna be able to make up for our human brain to, to help with treatment and diagnosis

Pete Waggoner, Host: We're is it fair to say though that from a operations perspective, day-to-day operation, you can become way more efficient and cost effective in utilizing some of those tools, but what you're really saying is you still need the person to person. Decision making contact. Absolutely. Emotion, connection and all of that.

So it's a cool little blend of what can happen there. 

Christa Walz: Yeah. AI I think has really helped. It's helped with some efficiencies. Yeah. But it doesn't take the place of the humans and it doesn't take the place of what we actually do in our jobs. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: What are some of the things that you would tell anybody listening to [00:27:00] this that could better prepare them for the process of home health?

Christa Walz: One of the things I always say is, we hear all the time, oh, I've never heard of you. And really. A lot of times people aren't gonna hear of us until they need us. And I would say as right, your, as your parents or loved ones are aging, is educate yourself. It's inevitable that it's gonna come right.

Whether it's hospitalization or home health or hospice or, whatever you're gonna need is just to educate yourself. Don't. Don't close your eyes off to think that it's not gonna happen to you or your family because it does. And the more prepared you can be, I think that goes more smoothly than when it happens in an emergent situation that people are really caught off guard and a lot of times.
Then they end up with decisions that they wouldn't want to make for themselves. And I think that's really sad because I think everyone wants to age gracefully and with dignity and have their wishes carried out. And I think it's really important to make sure that you educate yourself and that everyone's on the same page with that [00:28:00] 

Mike O'Connell: eyes and ears open.

Not many get to look till they're 95 and they're moving around. Great. They got their. Cognitive and they die. There's like, that absolutely doesn't 

Christa Walz: happen. Really. It doesn't happen very often and and I think the more, take advantage of when you see, when you see something like a webinar or a someone's gonna be at a senior living home or an open house, take advantage of those things.
Go and tour those places. Listen to a 

Mike O'Connell: podcast. Listen 

Christa Walz: to a podcast. Be prepared. That's, I think the biggest thing. Know 

Mike O'Connell: Aari does do those workshops. 

Christa Walz: We do. Yeah. Yeah. Is there 

Mike O'Connell: any coming up. Or is there? 

Christa Walz: We, so I know that in September we're up in Barron for one of the caregiver con conferences, and I believe October is the one up in Richmond at 

Mike O'Connell: w well used to be wt I was gonna say WITC.

I think that's still fair.

Christa Walz: Northwood Tech. Yes. Yeah. So we do we're very, that's another one of the things too about Adoray and the not-for-profit, is the community education. Being out and providing resources in the community as well. A lot of times they'll [00:29:00] have us come to an assisted living and give an education regarding our services.

Pete Waggoner, Host: What's the best way to get ahold of you? 

Christa Walz: So we have, our website is. www.addarray.org and all of our information is on there. My contact information is on there. 

Mike O'Connell: I wanna go back to one thing I just saw when you talking about those care conferences, things, dementia. 
Now don't you do some dementia testing and such?

Christa Walz: We do dementia testing. We can have our speech, we can have occupational therapists do dementia testing. We received a very generous grant within the last year from, the, a wife of one of our past patients to help. One, one thing that she found with her husband who is dying of advanced dementia was that there was not much community education or support.

And we were, we are tasked with finding a way to educate both community and caregivers and support. So we utilize a gal she's from Southern Wisconsin. Her name is Sherry. She is [00:30:00] trained by Tippa Snow. Tippa. Snow is the. Dementia Guru. And we just finished in June.

We have I believe it's about 75% of our hospice staff are dementia trained. They're called Dementia Care champions.

 
And we have done a community based one as well. We did it in the fall and in the spring, and then coming up in November, we're going to be doing. Going through again with, along with Western Wisconsin Health training, more of our caregivers, and then doing another community event as well.

Pete Waggoner, Host: Quick thing for everybody here, if this conversation's resonating with any of you. That are listening to this podcast chances someone you love, needs to hear too. Share this with them please. Whether it's a friend going through a loss, a family member who's grieving, or someone who's just beginning to plan ahead, share this episode.

You never know. The piece it might bring. I wanna get that in there real quick because I think it's a very important thing that it can be understated [00:31:00] that I mean, when do we all listen to podcasts and when do we all take in content and are we fully listening, that type of thing.

And I, I think there's so much good that can come out of this. I think the one thing that Christa you said that stood out the most to me was open your eyes and, look ahead and I think we get so tunnel visioned. On today only, and we ignore tomorrow and the next week, and it's so important to at least know.

Christa Walz: Absolutely. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: Because it may be you or maybe someone you love, and then you can quickly have answers. It probably has to make your job so much easier. 

Christa Walz: Yeah. I think people are scared. People are scared of aging, they're scared of illness, they're scared of hospice, those types of things, and so they don't want to learn about it 'cause they, it might make it more scary, however, I think the more you learn about it, the less scary it can be.

And then you're more prepared when I would agree with that. When it does happen with, I agree. It 

Mike O'Connell: reminds me of an old saying, my dad used to have is. Better to know us and not need us, than need us. And not know us. 

Christa Walz: Absolutely. [00:32:00] That is 100% the truth. Yeah.

Mike O'Connell: And you have a lot of resources on your webpage and Yes, I do.

You're always available to be talked to. 

Christa Walz: Yes, absolutely. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: Christa, thanks for joining us here today. 

Christa Walz: Yeah thank you so much for having me. 

Pete Waggoner, Host: It was great stuff. Christa Walz, the executive Director of Adoray Health and Hospice. You can find them @adoray.org. 

Christa Walz: Adoray.org org. Oh, check that.

Pete Waggoner, Host: And Adoray.org. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Krista. 

Christa Walz: Thank you.