Executive Q&A: Competition, technology forcing nonprofits to change

By Patricia Simms
The Wisconsin State Journal

The nonprofit world has changed in the last 10 years, with increased competition from for-profit companies in fields like hospice and home health care — services once dominated by nonprofits, says Melanie Ramey, CEO of The Hospice Organization and Palliative Experts (HOPE) of Wisconsin.
Ramey has spent much of her career heading a nonprofit.

“Slightly more than half of the hospices in the U.S. are for-profit,” she said. “Many of them are parts of national chains or are owned as a division of a national corporation. Their reimbursement is the same, but they have the advantage of centralized purchasing power, issuing stock, and the other opportunities of a for-profit business.”

Rapid technological change is also pressuring nonprofits, she said.  For example, hospices, regardless of size, have been forced to collect a lot of data in the last few years to file claims for reimbursement and to comply with other Medicare requirements.

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