HEALTH CARE

First License for Hospice: The Fullerton office of Hospital Home Health Care Agency of California helps some 500 terminally ill patients a year throughout Orange County.

But the nonprofit company can also market itself as the only licensed hospice provider in the state--at least for now. The health-care company has become the first in the state to be licensed to operate a hospice program.

Claire Tehan, the Torrance company’s vice-president for hospice, said she hopes the license will help impress health-care payers in the “very, very competitive” market-share battle between providers of home care for the terminally ill.

“Being the first one with a license--it’s a marketing tool,” Tehan said. “I can talk to insurers and say, ‘I’m the only licensed hospice in the state at this moment.’ And if they need to choose somebody, they can choose me.”

For more than a decade, the hospice industry pushed for legislation that would create separate licensing for its members. Previously, the state lumped hospices in with home health-care agencies, leading hospices to complain that state inspectors didn’t understand the differences between the two.

Last year, state legislation created a new licensing procedure. Among other requirements, a hospice now must provide nurses, social workers and volunteer helpers to assist dying patients and offer bereavement counseling for the family.