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MARCIA REISSIG FUND FOR PARTNERS TRANSITIONS
Improving the connection to compassionate end-of-life care

Purpose
As a lasting legacy to Marcia Reissig for her extraordinary leadership, vision and dedication, the Marcia Reissig Fund has been established to ensure that her vision for the Partners Transitions program — to improve the connection to compassionate care for patients at the end-of-life — lasts long into the future.

Marcia has guided the growth of Partners Home Care for the past six years while being recognized nationally as an innovative leader in the home health care community. In tribute to one of her most cherished accomplishments, the Marcia Reissig Fund will provide for the financial resources and will become an endowed fund to ensure the longevity of the mission of the Transitions program. Funds will support outreach and education to physicians, care coordination for end-of-life patients and collaboration with hospices. Future donations to Partners Home Care in support of Transitions will be placed in the Marcia Reissig Fund.

As a Masters prepared Registered Nurse and nationally Certified Home/Hospice Care Executive, Marcia Reissig has over 30 years of management and clinical experience at all levels in home care and public health. Marcia has committed much of her health care career to providing vision and leadership in the integration of home care organizations with each other and across the continuum of care. As the President of Partners Home Care over the last six years, Marcia has strengthened traditional home care services, while leading the development and expansion of private duty nursing and more recently hospice services. She has led PHC to become a leading innovator locally and nationally in the adoption of technology for use in the home. She has succeeded in the development, administration and integration of Partners HealthCare System's home health care programs which have grown to serve an average daily census of over 3,000 patients and provide more than 500,000 home visits each year to patients living in eastern Massachusetts.

Partners Transitions
Most people want to spend their last days surrounded by family and loved ones in the comfort of their own homes. However, many people do not know how to access end-of-life services. Patients often face overwhelming uncertainty about when to transition into hospice care, especially in Massachusetts, where there are many options at academic medical centers to receive specialty treatments for advanced diseases. For primary care physicians and even some specialists who have only one to two patients who die in their practice each year, they too are uncertain about the options for end-of-life patients.

In spring 2003, with a vision for how people dealing with a life-limiting illness could be better served and how their physicians could be more informed to guide them, Marcia Reissig, president of PHC, Dr. Craig Lilly, then chief of the medical intensive care unit at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Elizabeth Liebow, currently Vice President of Clinical Business Development at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Dr. Tom Lynch, Chief of Hematology and Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, envisioned the plans for Partners Transitions.

Officially established in May 2005, with pilot funding from Partners HealthCare System (PHS), Marcia Reissig took the lead on making the Partners Transitions program a reality. With the hiring of a program director, Transitions has evolved into a well-known, respected and trusted resource of PHS as well as a resource for other hospices and home care agencies.

Programs and Services
Transitions is a resource that helps people access the services of compassionate caregivers and offers patients and their families comfort and peace of mind. By working together with physicians, caregivers, patients and families, the Transitions director works to answer questions and identify choices so that patients have the highest quality of care and are able to spend their precious time with family and loved ones. The Transitions director is expert at mobilizing services for patients and families to guide them through the health care system.

The financial resources from the Reissig Fund will help to support the key functions of the Transitions director and the medical director to:
• Collaborate with four hospices credentialed by PHS in eastern Massachusetts to ensure fast and efficient referrals to hospice;
• Train and educate clinicians at PHC to be more responsive to the needs of end-of-life patients and their families;
• Provide case management to patients with life-limiting illnesses;
• Reach out to primary care physicians and specialists to increase their awareness of Partners Transitions and the resources available for their end-of-life patients;
• Train physicians to use Outpatient End-of-Life Order Algorithms; and
• Evaluate program services and outcomes for continued improvement.

Better Outcomes for Patients and Families
Overall, the Transitions program has made a positive impact as measured by several indicators:
• Improvements in the referral patterns whereby patients at end-of-life are being referred sooner to hospice, which means they spend more time in hospice;
• An increase in referrals overall from PHS/PHC to the four collaborating hospices;
• An increase in the number of patients referred to hospice by non-oncology physicians; and
• Continued growth in the number of referrals to hospice from physicians and families.

Marcia Reissig Fund for Partners Transitions
The Transitions program has been supported by limited funding from Partners HealthCare System. As insurance companies do not cover Transitions' personalized care management for end-of-life patients and their families, the future of Transitions rests upon charitable support from private foundations and individuals.

In order to ensure Marcia Reissig's vision for improving the connection to compassionate end-of-life care well into the future, PHC has set a goal of raising $250,000 to establish this fund for Partners Transitions in her honor.

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