VITAS Healthcare Appoints Rory Farrand as National Director of VITAS Palliative Care

10/28/2019

MIAMI, FL – VITAS^® Healthcare, the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care, has named Rory Farrand as director of VITAS^® Palliative Care. 

In her new role, Farrand oversees the operations of VITAS’ palliative care initiatives enterprise-wide to formalize, broaden and expand palliative care services and solutions to VITAS patients, families and healthcare providers. Her key objectives include embedding goals-of-care conversation expertise into the palliative care specialty and serving as an industry advocate for legislative and regulatory action toward community-based palliative care delivery models.

“Rory’s training and professional experience combine to create an ideal fit for this role, and we are certain that her leadership and vision will add value to the palliative care division and its growth,” said VITAS Vice President Brian Davis, who oversees palliative care services.

Learn More: What's the Difference Between Palliative Care vs. Hospice Care?

Farrand’s varied career spans clinical research, assisted living management, Alzheimer’s/dementia care, geriatric psychiatry, and nursing and executive management of clinical operations for national companies that specialize in palliative care. She attributes her interest in palliative medicine to the challenges she and her family faced during her mother’s death from cancer. 

“Palliative care must move upstream to make it appropriate for anybody at any stage of illness to understand that quality of life is important at any time of life,” Farrand says. 

Most recently, she served as regional vice president of clinical operations for Nashville-based Aspire Health, specializing in home-based palliative care, and as vice president of medical management for Pittsburgh-based Pennsylvania Health & Wellness (Centene Corporation), responsible for managing and expanding health and behavioral care.

Farrand is a board-certified adult nurse practitioner, has an advance practice nursing certificate in palliative care, and is a member of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association and the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association.

She holds master’s degrees in nursing from Boston College, expressive therapy from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and psychology from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, along with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.