Keys to Compassionate Care
The hospice team often meets families at one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. A loved one is nearing the end, emotions are raw, and time feels both urgent and suspended. What many families don’t realize - until they are in it - is how much harder this moment becomes when conversations about death were never had in advance. Avoiding discussions about death...
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 sequencing. In contrast, unfamiliar or irregular music required greater...
Hospice leaders often understand that QAPI is required by CMS, but many do not know how to document the program in a way that proves it is genuinely active and effective. CMS surveyors want to see more than binders, charts, or paperwork. They are looking for documentation that demonstrates continuous, data-driven improvement that is tracked over time. In other words,...
In hospice, most organizations understand why Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) is required. What many do not understand is how to collect data in a way that reveals patterns, risks, and opportunities for improvement. QAPI data collection does not mean saving every report, printing every dashboard, or drowning in spreadsheets. It means collecting the...
A hospice Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI) program is the formal system a hospice uses to understand how well it is functioning, where it is at risk, and how it will improve over time. Under 42 CFR § 418.58, CMS requires every hospice to maintain an ongoing, hospice-wide, data-driven program that evaluates the quality and safety of care and takes...
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 supported, and how clinicians balance doing what is possible with doing what...
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 research focuses on inpatient settings, the lessons it offers can help us...
Empathy is often described as the heart of hospice care. It allows caregivers and hospice professionals to connect deeply with patients and families during one of life’s most vulnerable transitions. Yet empathy, when misunderstood or overextended, can become emotionally exhausting rather than sustaining. An article from Psychology Today titled “Don’t Drown in Empathy,”...
You don’t have to be a policy expert to notice something basic and uncomfortable about health care in the United States: Your chances of getting timely, good care change a lot depending on where you live. Roughly one in five people in the U.S. live in rural areas. Yet the system they interact with can look very different from what someone in a big city sees. The “Rural...