Building Trust Through Transparency: Practical Steps for Home Health and Hospice Providers

By Susan Mills, RN, Senior Program Director

Susan Mills worked more than three decades as a registered nurse serving home health and hospice organizations. In her current role at ACHC, she guides Hospice, Home Health, and Home Infusion Therapy Accreditation. She also manages ACHC staff who oversee Assisted Living, Behavioral Health, Home Care, Palliative Care, and Renal Dialysis Accreditation.

Posted: October 20, 2026

Home-based care is one of healthcare’s most personal and trust-dependent environments. Patients and families rely on providers to deliver compassionate, quality care, often while navigating complex clinical, regulatory, and financial requirements. 

Today, that trust is being tested.  

Recent federal and state enforcement actions have placed greater scrutiny on fraud, waste, and abuse across the healthcare industry, including hospice and home health. While these actions are directed at bad actors, their effects extend much further. Increased scrutiny can influence how patients, families, referral partners, regulators, payors, and the public perceive the industry as a whole. 

For reputable agencies, this environment presents an opportunity to make something they already value even more visible: their commitment to quality, accountability, and transparency. 

Responsible providers cannot control the actions of bad actors. They can, however, help stakeholders clearly understand who they are, how they operate, and the systems they have in place to support quality care. 

Transparency is not a communications exercise 

Patients and referral partners should not have to work to determine who operates your agency, where it is located, what services it provides, or whether its credentials can be verified. 

Begin by looking at your operations and public presence through the eyes of someone encountering them for the first time. 

Is it immediately clear where the agency is located? Who leads it? The communities it serves? The services it provides?  

These may seem like basic questions. But clarity on the answers demonstrates your organization's commitment to transparency and accountability.  

Take practical steps to communicate quality

1. Clearly identify your organization and its location(s).
A patient, family member, referral partner, or regulatory agency should be able to understand where your agency operates and how to reach it without encountering conflicting information.

Although you are delivering care in patient homes, credibility is established through accurate, accessible information about your office location, service area, telephone numbers, and other contact information across public-facing channels.
If multiple organizations or locations are part of a larger corporate structure, make those relationships understandable.

2. Put leadership in view.
Healthcare is built on human relationships. Consider making appropriate information about leadership, clinical expertise, and organizational structure readily available.

Identifying your team helps show that there are real people accountable for the care, quality, and operation of the organization.

3. Make credentials easy to verify.
Licensure, Medicare certification, accreditation, and other relevant organizational credentials should be clearly and accurately represented.

Periodically review how accreditation seals and quality designations appear publicly and ensure their appropriate use.
Whenever possible, help patients, families, and referral partners understand what these credentials mean and how they can be verified.

Accreditation, for example, is more than a logo added to your website. Include an explanation that accreditation is earned through independent third-party evaluation against established standards for quality and safety.

4. Be specific about the care you provide.
Clearly communicate the services you offer, populations you serve, and geographic areas in which you operate.

Avoid relying exclusively on broad statements about quality and compassion. Specific, understandable information helps patients and referral partners make informed decisions and reduce confusion about an organization's capabilities or scope of services.

5. Make quality and accountability part of your story.
Home health and hospice providers understandably want to communicate compassion, service, and clinical expertise. In today’s environment, you should also consider how to demonstrate accountability.

Explain how your organization approaches quality improvement, patient rights, complaints and grievances, compliance, staff education, and other safeguards for patient care.

The objective is not to overwhelm patients with regulatory information. It is to demonstrate that quality is supported by systems, processes, and accountable leadership—not simply promised in marketing language.

6. Ensure public information reflects actual operations.
Just as you routinely evaluate clinical records, quality processes, and operational performance, a review of public-facing information ensures that what patients, families, referral partners, and regulators see aligns with how the organization actually operates.

Review your website, business listings, public directories, locations, telephone numbers, leadership information, services, and accreditation references. Verify that those sources are current and consistent.

Transparency must reflect reality 

There is an important distinction between communicating compliance and operating with accountability. Words like quality, compliance, compassion, and integrity are meaningful only when they reflect the organization's actual practices. 

Accreditation’s role is not only evaluating policies, processes, quality systems and performance against established standards. Nor should it be presented as doing so. What accreditation can do is help organizations establish and maintain systems designed to support quality, accountability, continuous improvement, and compliance with applicable requirements. 

An opportunity for responsible providers to lead

For home health and hospice organizations, transparency can reinforce what quality providers already know: trust is earned through actions. Clear information. Accountable leadership. Verifiable credentials. Consistent practices. Meaningful quality systems. Independent evaluation. 

Together, these practices can help patients, families, referral partners, and communities better understand the organizations they are trusting with their care. 

Bad actors can damage confidence far beyond their own organizations. When that happens, reputable providers' recourse is to distinguish themselves by reinforcing their dedication to responsible care.  

 At ACHC, we believe accreditation helps healthcare organizations demonstrate this commitment every day. In an era of increased scrutiny, quality should not only be practiced; it should be visible. 

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Read more articles about ACHC Home Health and Hospice Accreditation here.