Keys to Compassionate Care
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 now serve as the primary caregivers for aging parents, spouses, or...
What the study examined A new national study examined US Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries over age 65 who were admitted to an ICU between 2011 and 2023. The authors found that discharges to hospice after ICU admission increased substantially over time, including an increase in hospice discharges per 100,000 beneficiaries and a rise in the proportion of ICU patients...
A recent narrative review published in Cureus examined trends in U.S. academic publications on Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD). Rather than arguing for or against MAiD, the authors analyzed the scholarly literature itself. They reviewed recent peer-reviewed articles and categorized them by position (supportive, critical, or neutral), author affiliation, specialty, and...
Recent reporting has highlighted how major health systems such as Mass General Brigham and Mayo Clinic are using Generative AI (GenAI) for clinical reasoning. These applications extend beyond administrative efficiencies and into the generation of preliminary diagnoses and treatment plans. For hospice and palliative care, this development is not simply a technological...
Many hospice administrators are familiar with the hospice PEPPER report. A smaller number of hospice leaders, however, are familiar with its counterpart: the Comparative Billing Report (CBR) and eCBR, the electronic version of the Comparative Billing Report. While the PEPPER provides a general overview of a hospice agency's billing data, the CBR is a specific tool used...
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...