Hospice Savannah & CAPABLE Program featured by Hospice News – read the full article below!
Hospice Savannah Fuels Expansion of CAPABLE Program to Enable Aging in Place
By Holly Vossel | February 7, 2025
Georgia-based Hospice Savannah Inc. recently received nearly $2 million in grant funding to fuel expansion of its Community Aging in Place — Advancing Better Living for Elders (CAPABLE) program.
Launched in 2023, the CAPABLE program aims to improve seniors’ ability to safely age in place. Through the program, a team of interdisciplinary professionals assess and address the physical and environmental challenges of medically fragile aging adults.
Relatively few CAPABLE programs exist in the Southeast, according to Kathleen Benton, president and CEO of Hospice Savannah. These services can help providers learn where the greatest areas of unmet needs exist among swelling aging communities, Benton indicated.
“We were interested in understanding this more and [saw] it as a very important upstream program that really aligns more with our palliative-type functions,” Benton told Hospice News. “More importantly, in a nation that is absolutely aging, CAPABLE addresses the needs and issues with functional impairment that allow people to stay in their home and age well. CAPABLE was something we knew we could do right away if we could get the donations and funds to start helping people.”
Hospice Savannah’s CAPABLE program is designed to help improve general safety, reduce falls and increase accessibility and improve functional abilities in the home. These person-directed, home-based programs address physical, practical, emotional and health care needs.
In addition to the CAPABLE program, Hospice Savannah operates a hospice inpatient unit, as well as a Center for Education & Grief Support, The Steward Center for Palliative Care and The Edel Caregiver Institute. The nonprofit hospice also offers palliative care and grief support, including an annual children’s grief program, Camp Aloha.
Hospice Savannah was recently awarded a grant in the funding category of Older Adults Home Modification Programs. The funds will in part help to expand the CAPABLE program’s ability to complete safety and functional home modifications and repairs in the primary residences of roughly 200 eligible low-income senior homeowners and renters. Seniors who qualify include individuals experiencing difficulty in at least one or more activities of daily life (ADLs), or challenges with two or more instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs).
CAPABLE programs integrate an interdisciplinary approach from occupational therapists, nurses and handy workers to assess an individual’s largest challenges and needs in their home setting. Participants are provided education, tools and resources to improve their overall well-being including assistance with ADLs, home modifications and medical equipment, among other needs.
The new funds will aid in the ability to grow and sustain the CAPABLE program over time, allowing Hospice Savannah to have a slightly larger staff team during the next three-year grant period, according to Melissa Gaule, director of Hospice Savannah’s CAPABLE program. Gaule also serves as the organization’s director of palliative care and provider management.
A large goal of the program is to increase the ability to serve more individuals and collaborate with more community organizations
“The grant is meant to last for a three-year period, and that really has given us some longevity as well as increasing the number of people we can serve,” Gaule told Hospice News. “In order to expand our workforce, we also have to expand our network.”
Through its CAPABLE program, Hospice Savannah collaborates with local organizations to provide services and resources to seniors across its four-county geographic service region in Georgia. Services are provided at no cost to seniors. The hospice partners with medical equipment providers and installation services, low-income housing organizations, senior living facilities, community housing agencies and nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.
The new grant funding will also help with the ability to raise the financial threshold for participating in the program further above the median poverty level, and hopefully expand its reach in the process, Gaule indicated. Hospice Savannah’s CAPABLE program began with a focus on individuals who earned less than $2,000 monthly after health care expenses. Seniors who do not meet the financial eligibility criteria are among those facing significant barriers of access, she stated.
“One thing we’ve encountered is that there are so many folks that get caught in the middle who really need assistance. Because of [the grant], we’ll actually be able to help people who are still technically low-income, but maybe not the lowest income,” Gaule said.
The CAPABLE program has served roughly 130 individuals since its inception, with 23 active clients currently utilizing these services. A key return on investment of the program thus far has been improved quality of life among senior communities at relatively low cost rates, according to Gaule.
Hospice Savannah’s CAPABLE program has helped to empower seniors to live more independently and safely in their homes, as well as to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and emergency department visits.
“Our hope is that the impact is far reaching [and that] we are able to reach more community members and really put some action behind that phrase of ‘aging in place,’” Gaule said. “Health care is supposed to be about learning what’s important to people, but the system has evolved in a way that doesn’t always allow for that. CAPABLE really teaches us to step outside the medical model and change people’s lives by evolving to meet their needs.”
More than a decade of data has found that CAPABLE programs have helped to reduce the impact of functional impairment and disability, enhance motivation and self-efficacy, improve health disparities, address emotional health and decrease hospitalizations and nursing home stays, according to a research analysis from the John Hopkins School of Nursing.
CAPABLE programs have in some cases provided more than 6x return on investment nationwide, the analysis found. Roughly $3,000 in program costs per participant yielded more than $300,000 in medical cost savings, driven largely by reduced inpatient and outpatient service utilization, according to the research.