Patient Care
Why Hospice Care is Turning to Non-Traditional Technology
Hospice has always been rooted in human presence: symptom relief, careful listening, emotional support, and the work of helping patients and families live meaningfully in the time that remains. That should not change. But if hospice is truly about quality of life, then it is worth asking a serious q
March 15, 2026 · 9 min read
Analyzing the 'Quiet Workforce': New Insights into U.S. Family Caregiving
Many conversations about healthcare focus on hospitals, physicians, or emerging technologies. However, a significant portion of care in the United States occurs in a different setting: the home. Data from a recent Pew Research Center survey highlights the scale of this shift. Millions of Americans n
March 11, 2026 · 2 min read
Music, the Brain, and End-of-Life Care
A recent study published in PLOS ONE explores how music influences the way the brain processes, learns, and remembers information. The researchers found that listening to music – especially music that is familiar and predictable – can significantly affect attention, memory encoding, and cognitive se
January 19, 2026 · 3 min read
What Ethical Hospice Care Really Means at the End of Life
Hospice care is built on a simple promise: to support comfort, dignity, and quality of life when time is limited. Yet beneath that promise are complex ethical considerations that shape everyday decisions. These decisions include how symptoms are treated, how choices are honored, how families are sup
December 26, 2025 · 4 min read
How Can Virtual Nurses Improve Hospice at Home Quality of Care
Virtual nursing is rapidly gaining traction across healthcare, driven by workforce shortages and evolving expectations for care delivery. A recent JAMA Network Open article analyzing hospital-based virtual nursing offers important insights that extend well beyond acute care walls. While that researc
December 25, 2025 · 5 min read
AI At the End of Life: Help, Not a Decider
End-of-life decisions are some of the hardest moments any family, clinician, or hospice team will ever face. Even when a patient has had candid conversations with loved ones, the reality of decline can feel different than anything imagined. When there is no advance directive or clear documentation o
November 25, 2025 · 5 min read
Beyond the Diagnosis: Presence, Empathy, and Clinical Care
The multiple facets of healthcare In most conversations about healthcare, we talk about the clinical side first.Did the doctor order the right tests?Was the surgery successful?What did the scan show? Those questions matter, of course. But if you’ve ever been the patient in the bed – or the family me
November 25, 2025 · 7 min read
What Pet Therapy Actually Means for Your Hospice Agency
The profound impact of pet therapy in end-of-life care is not just a heartwarming story; it’s a clinically supported intervention that enhances patient well-being, supports family coping, and adds a vital dimension to a hospice’s care model. For clinical and administrative teams, a pet therapy progr
August 26, 2025 · 4 min read
The Hospice Initial Assessment: A Foundation for Compliance & Quality
When hospice patients have no family or stable home, care gets complex. This blog explores how teams can respond with compassion, ethics, and creativity.
August 24, 2025 · 4 min read
Navigating Ethics in Hospice Care
When hospice patients have no family or stable home, care gets complex. This blog explores how teams can respond with compassion, ethics, and creativity.
July 31, 2025 · 2 min read
Recognizing Signs of Imminent Death: Improving Hospice Care and Quality Outcomes
Understanding when a patient is approaching imminent death is one of the most sensitive and critical aspects of hospice care. Recognizing clear clinical indicators not only allows hospice teams to adjust care plans appropriately but also helps families prepare emotionally and logistically for their
July 13, 2025 · 2 min read
Innovation in Hospice Bereavement Programs
In recent years, hospice bereavement care has undergone significant transformation. Early programs offered traditional service delivery models relying on limited offerings, and structured and uniform service delivery format. Over time, however, researchers and clinicians have found that that a
June 28, 2025 · 6 min read
See Something Say Something: Mandatory Reporting!
Hospice clinicians are mandated reporters with an individual duty to report known or suspected patient abuse. See something – say something!
January 23, 2025 · 3 min read
Root Cause Analysis for Transforming Delivery of Hospice Care
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a systematic and structured process used to identify the root causes that results in an undesirable outcome or adverse event and to develop corrective actions. The goal of RCA is not just to treat the symptoms of a problem but to delve into the underlying causes of the f
May 29, 2024 · 5 min read
End-of-Life Pain Management
One of the greatest fears people face at the end of life is pain. Sadly, many individuals with serious illness still experience unnecessary suffering because pain is not fully recognized, effectively treated, or clearly communicated to the care team. Pain affects more than just the body. It impacts
February 25, 2024 · 4 min read
What is the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP)?
What is the purpose of hospice quality reporting? The Affordable Care Act authorized the establishment of a Quality Reporting Program for hospices. The Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP) was established in 2014. HQRP aims to ensure that the level of quality in clinical care, symptom mana
December 11, 2022 · 3 min read
Unusual Circumstances: Face to Face Encounters
Prior to the third hospice benefit period, and prior to each subsequent benefit period, a hospice physician or nurse practitioner is required to have a face to face encounter with the hospice patient to recertify that the patient continues to be Medicare eligible for hospice benefits. The face to f
August 4, 2022 · 2 min read
What is Face to Face Recertification?
A hospice face to face encounter is a step in patient recertification beginning with the third benefit period and each benefit period thereafter. The goal of hospice face to face patient encounter is to encourage greater involvement of the physician in the care of patients who have been on hospice f
August 4, 2022 · 3 min read
Core Services: Using Employees versus Contractors
Hospice Conditions of Participation – employees versus contractors Hospice conditions of participation require that almost all hospice core services are delivered by hospice agency employees and may not be delivered by contractors. Hospice core services include: Nursing services Social services Coun
August 1, 2022 · 1 min read
Navigating the Hospice Initial Accreditation Process
What is hospice initial accreditation and why is it important? Hospice initial accreditation is a way to ensure delivery of consistent and high quality services across all accredited hospice agencies. The accreditation program ensures that the hospice agency is fully compliant with Medicare Conditio
July 31, 2022 · 5 min read
