Aviva Senior Living partners with Empath Tidewell Hospice to support Tikvah, Sarasota’s first Jewish hospice program 
NEWSnet, Sarasota, FL; by EIN Presswire; 9/15/26 
Aviva Senior Living is proud to partner with Empath Tidewell Hospice, Sarasota’s leading provider of end-of-life care, to launch a new Jewish hospice program called Tikvah. Led by Sepi Ackerman, Director of Jewish Community Development at Tidewell Hospice, Tikvah is the first program of its kind in Sarasota. It offers specialized services to honor the wishes of Jewish patients and help keep them comfortable during their final days. ... The program provides many services, such as service boxes that bring religious traditions like Shabbat to a patient’s bedside, on-call clergy through a coalition of local rabbis, Jewish vigils, Jewish music, and more. Patients and families can join Tikvah for free as part of their existing Tidewell care.

CMS posts revised Model Election Statement and Addendum 
CMS; compiled by Guest Editor, Judi Lund Person; 9/10/26 
CMS has posted the revised model election statement and addendum to the CMS website, which includes language for the mandatory addendum effective October 1, 2026. Hospice providers can use these model forms as the guide to the revised form. Pay particular attention to using the forms with an August 2026 date.

• Model Example of Hospice Election Statement - August 2026 (PDF)
• Model Hospice Election Statement Addendum - August 2026 (PDF)

Hospice Alliance marks 45 years of care Sept. 25 
Racine County Eye, Pleasant Prairie, WI; 9/14/26 
Hospice Alliance is celebrating 45 years of serving families in southeastern Wisconsin, marking an anniversary that dates to Sept. 25, 1981, when community members founded the organization to expand access to end-of-life care and family support. ... The organization’s services include care provided in private homes, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities, as well as at its Hospice Alliance Hospice House in Pleasant Prairie, according to the announcement. The nonprofit said it remains guided by a mission of “Adding Life to Days” and provides care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.

Perceived importance of good death components among patients with advanced cancer and family caregivers 
JAMA Network; by Hammoda Abu-Odah, PhD, Gulbeyaz Can, PhD, Sotirios Plakas, PhD, Juanjuan Zhao, PhD, Xixi Wang, MSN, Alexandros Stergiou, MSc(c), Ourania Govina, PhD, Kimya Kilicaslan, PhD, Bahar Ozdemir, MD, Matthew J. Allsop, PhD, Mitsunori Miyashita, PhD, Alex Molassiotis, PhD, Janelle Yorke, PhD, and Frances Kam Yuet Wong, PhD; 9/14/26
Importance: Although the concept of a good death is central to palliative care policy and practice, empirical evidence is largely derived from high-income Western or single-country contexts, limiting cross-setting relevance.
Objective: To determine the importance of good death components, compare priorities across settings, and examine patient–caregiver differences and setting-by-role interactions. ... 
Conclusions and Relevance: In this cross-sectional study, patients with advanced cancer and family caregivers across 5 settings shared a broad aspiration for a good death, but priorities varied across settings. Emotional peace, dignity, and family connection were consistently highly valued. These findings suggest that culturally sensitive palliative care models should recognize both shared end-of-life priorities and setting-specific meanings of a good death.

Retired educator gives back to grieving children at Camp Braveheart 
WJAR-10, NBC, Cranston, RI; by Patrice Wood; 9/9/26 
Young hearts come together at Camp Braveheart in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. And the first person to greet them when they get off the bus is Harry Potter. Potter is a retired Rhode Island school educator with a famous name and a heart of gold. They come Camp Braveheart to begin to heal after the death of a loved one. Braveheart is now in its 20th year and much of that time, Potter has been a trusted counselor. "The little kids think I'm magical. You see them running around the camp saying, 'Harry Potter, Harry Potter,'" Potter said. That connection eventually opens the door for a more serious conversation.

U.S. hospices with a 5-star CMS family caregiver survey rating
Hospice & Palliative Care Today; 9/6/26
... This list was compiled directly from CMS's official downloadable dataset — "Hospice care – Provider CAHPS Hospice Survey Data" (August 2026 release) — available on the CMS Provider Data Catalog. Every hospice below has a "SUMMARY_STAR_RATING" (Family Caregiver Survey Rating) of 5 out of 5 in that file. You can look up any individual hospice, or search by ZIP code, on Care Compare.

LifeCare Home Health & Hospice Family launches new website to make finding home-based care easier 
The Best Times, Irving, TX; by LifeCare Home Health Family; 9/14/26 
LifeCare Home Health & Hospice Family has launched a new corporate website designed to make it easier for patients, families, referral partners and healthcare professionals to understand LifeCare's growing family of companies and connect with home health, hospice and in-home care services in their communities. Introduced earlier this year, the new website at lchhfamily.com serves as a centralized digital resource for LifeCare's network of locally operated healthcare organizations.

Inspiring a culture of ownership through mutual accountability-A health care system's approach to connecting bedside expertise with boardroom strategy
Nursing Management; by Torry Robinson, Stuart Downs; 8/26
A health care system's approach to integrating the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Healthy Work Environment (HWE) standards across organizational levels demonstrates a replicable pathway for aligning bedside expertise with boardroom strategy, an essential linkage in organizational strategic planning. This article describes one health care system's 3-year journey in embedding the HWE framework throughout the deployment of the nursing strategy. Following operationalization of HWE as a component of the nursing strategic framework, the health care system achieved sustained improvement across all domains of the Healthy Work Environment Assessment Tool (HWEAT), bolstering an organizational commitment to continuously improve and measure practice-environment health. This transparent, high-visibility approach emphasizes accountability from the Chief Nurse Executive to frontline nurses, underpinning a shared commitment that aligns clinical practice with organizational strategy. Organizations that embed HWE into their nursing strategic plan empower nurses at every level to shape and share ownership of the practice environment.

Former VA nurse charged with intentionally abusing hospice patient 
News 8 Now, La Crosse/Toma, WI; by Sam Shilts; 9/10/26 
A former registered nurse at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center faces a felony charge after prosecutors say she intentionally removed oxygen from a dying hospice patient, causing him great bodily harm. Beth Marie Holtz, 53, of New Berlin, was charged Wednesday in Monroe County court with intentionally abusing a patient causing great bodily harm. An arrest warrant was issued the same day. According to the criminal complaint, the incident occurred Aug. 17, 2025, involving a 75-year-old patient who had been admitted to hospice with pulmonary fibrosis and had a medical order for continuous oxygen supply.

Hospice Home & Garden Tour raises $40K+ for Granite VNA 
The Laconia Daily Sun, Laconia, NH; Press Release; 9/15/26 
Nearly 500 attendees explored four exceptional properties in East Alton and Wolfeboro during Granite VNA’s annual Hospice Home & Garden Tour on July 15. The tour raised more than $40,000 to support the agency’s hospice services. Guests enjoyed an afternoon experiencing rich history through architecture and thoughtfully designed and renovated interiors and taking in stunning views of Lake Winnipesaukee from three of the properties. 

Medicare moments: The scarcity of Medicare caregiver benefits 
Allied News; by Joel Mekler; 9/14/26 
... AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving released the 2025 Caregiving in the U.S. report, their newest update since 2020. This comprehensive document offers an in-depth look at the evolving landscape of family caregiving for adults, highlighting key trends, challenges, and potential reforms. A key discovery is the swift growth in family caregiving. Almost 25% of adults — 63 million Americans — spent the last year caring for an adult (59 million) or a child (4 million) with complex medical needs or disabilities, marking a 45% increase since 2015. This trend underscores the essential role of family caregivers and exposes systemic shortcomings that place significant burdens on them, highlighting the pressing need for reforms.

9/11 Remembrances Today
Hospice and Palliative Care Today; compiled by Joy Berger; 9/10/26 
In hospice and palliative care, we understand grief's long reach — the "normal" losses we companion daily, and the tragic ones that live on in us for a lifetime. Today marks 25 years since that morning. 

• New York City: 9/11 Memorial & Museum - 25 Years Later 
• Washington DC: The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial
• Shanksville, PA: Flight 93 National Memorial
• Nationwide 9/11 Memorial Map: a growing map of memorials nationwide that honor the lives lost and the heroes who responded to the September 11 attacks. Each marker reflects a community’s dedication to remembrance, resilience, and unity. 

Many of you have enthusiastically told us that you start each morning with our newsletter's "Today Encouragement." May we join together from our locations across the nation, with a prayer sung by those young children (or not even born) when it occurred: "Let there be peace on earth," sung at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum by the Young People's Chorus of New York City, for Pope Francis and other world interfaith leaders.

I don't think I've ever learned any deep, lasting, like-changing lessons on the crest of success. I have learned very little from winning, but I have learned a great deal from losing. ~Dr. Chuck Swindoll