Age-Friendly Care: Looking Beyond the Diagnosis

Hannah Vale (0:03)

Welcome to Home Health Revealed, the podcast for home health and hospice leaders who want to stay connected to the industry and ahead of what's next. Home Health Revealed podcast, I am Hannah Vale, your host, and I am here today with Raianne Melton. She is the Senior Director of Clinical Services, Professional Services at Axxess. And as you know, is one of the nation's fastest growing home healthcare technology companies. She serves as a subject matter expert in hospice and palliative care, helping to develop training as a consultant and certification courses for these specialties. She also supports patient engagement for Axxess's CHAP solution, leads content development, serves as an ANCC Lead Nurse Planner, participates in the Alliance Education Workgroup and the Emerging Models and Innovative Care Workgroup, and is an Alliance Grassroots Ambassador. She is also a recipient of the McKnight's 2026 Pinnacle Marketplace Influencer Award.

With 20 years of hospice care experience across multiple organizations, she has held several leadership roles. Most recently, she served as Director of Clinical Strategy for Banner Health, where she developed strategic education to support current and future business opportunities, and helped redesign the palliative care delivery model to improve patient outcomes.

Raeanne earned her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Phoenix, and holds CHPN certification through the Hospice and Palliative Care Credentialing Center. Welcome, Raeanne.

Raianne Melton (1:43)

Thank you. It's so nice to be here with you, Hannah.

Hannah Vale (1:46)

That is quite a bio. You have just amazing experience, great, rich history in this industry.

Raianne Melton (1:54)

Well, when you get to a certain age, which we're not, but with time comes experience, I found.

Hannah Vale (2:06)

Well, you're probably not dealing with any of the smoke advisory from the Canadian fires?

Raianne Melton (2:13)

No, we've got monsoon rain. We're having flood watches.

Hannah Vale (2:19)

Oh, no, but we've got, it's just completely hazy outside from the Canadian fires.

Raianne Melton (2:25)

We were talking about it yesterday. Was it yesterday? No, it was the day before yesterday. We went to Legal Seafood right there in the mall of the hotel for lunch. We were sitting at the window and the waitress said, this guy is looking yellow when it's because of the fires from Canada.

Hannah Vale (2:43)

We're just right on the other side. A lot of New York are dealing with a lot of that today. Just fun, whatever.

Something else I was talking about today that I was going to mention to you. The daylight savings time.

Raianne Melton (2:58)

Have you seen? We're so excited about that. Although, there was a little bit of a downside for me. Because we stay on standard time the whole time. Arizona. It does not change time. So six months of the year, I'm on mountain time, which means that working in Dallas, my day starts at 7 a.m. And six months of the year, I'm on Pacific time.

So my day starts at 6 a.m. If this goes into effect, I'll be at that 6 a.m. start for the rest of my career, probably.

Hannah Vale (3:44)

Yeah. And is that you like it or you don't like it?

Raianne Melton (3:47)

I don't like it. No, I don't like it.

Hannah Vale (3:48)

Does that one make a big difference?

Raianne Melton (3:50)

It makes a big difference, yeah.

Hannah Vale (3:53)

It's been interesting to see the discussion around some of the statistics of, okay, if you do daylight savings and have that extra hour, you know, longer, like later sunset, accidents at dusk, kids going to school at certain times. And I was really interested about the risk of stroke and some of the things that happen when we time change.

Raianne Melton (4:19)

Yeah, it's hard.

When we moved to Virginia for 28 years, we hadn't changed time. You know, it took us a week to adjust to the time change the first year.

Hannah Vale (4:34)

Yeah.

Raianne Melton (4:35)

Yeah.

Hannah Vale (4:37)

It is amazing how that just, I mean, it's just one hour, right? You think it's just one hour.

Raianne Melton (4:41)

Yeah.

Hannah Vale (4:43)

But how it takes to adapt to that.

Raianne Melton (4:45)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Vale (4:47)

What are you hoping for then? Is it, it would be the-

Raianne Melton (4:50)

Well, I'd rather, if we were going to go on, we just stay on standard time than I'd have that, I'd be on mountain time. But it looks like it's, I mean, it definitely said, they like stay on daylight savings time. So I'll be three hours from the East Coast, and which is hard when you're traveling to present, and that three-hour difference, and you get an 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. session, and it's 5 a.m. your time.