Awards and Recognitions: March 2026

• Trudy Busch-Valentine School of Nursing Professor of Nursing Verna Hendricks-Ferguson, Ph.D., has been named the 2026 National Distinguished Nurse Researcher Award by the National Hospice and Palliative Nursing Association (HPNA).
  
  
• Dr. Katherine Calloway, Chief Medical Director of HospiceCare WV, was selected to the West Virginia Executive magazine's Health Care Hall of Fame.
  
  
• Lee Campbell Drinkard, MD, FACP is acknowledged by The Inner Circle - Leaders in Healthcare as a Pinnacle Lifetime Member for his contributions to Hematology, Oncology, and Palliative Care.
  
  
• MaineHealth Waldo Hospital has been  recognized by the Lown Institute for outstanding performance, earning the #1 ranking in Maine for social responsibility as well as #1 in the state for Health Equity and Avoiding Overuse. In addition, the hospital is in the Top 10 in the Nation for Avoiding Overuse. MaineHealth includes home helath, hospice and senior care services.

• Phillip Heath, President and CEO at Samaritan, a provider of hospice, palliative, primary care and grief services in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, has been honored with the Diversity in Business Awards 2026 by the Philadelphia Business Journal.

QIM26-302: Hospice at the bedside: A Quality Improvement Initiative to improve end of life care and reduce inpatient mortality in a cancer center 
Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network - JNCCN; by Matthew Murphy, Jacqueline Young, Hardik Thakkar, Sean Powell, Timothy Hembree, and David Buxton; 3/31/26 
...  Patients dying in the hospital may not survive transfer to external hospice units. ...  Integration of GIP Hospice beds into the hospital has streamlined delivery of timely, comprehensive EoL care for patients and bereavement support for families. The collaborative care model allows the hospital-based team to deliver care with active support from the hospice agency. Families express appreciation for the program, especially in situations when the patient is not stable for transfer.  

Hospice House board announces plans to sell shuttered facility 
Owatonna Peoples Press, Owatonna, MN; by Josh Lafollette; 4/1/26 
For nearly two decades, Homestead Hospice House brought peace and comfort to community members in their final days, and brought joy to their loved ones in even the most trying times. Today, the house sits empty, despite the concerted efforts of local volunteers. After efforts to reopen the house stalled last year, the HHH board has announced plans to sell the facility and surrounding acreage, and use the proceeds to establish a fund dedicated to supporting local end-of-life care services.

Seniors who say they’re “not afraid of death” often still carry these quiet worries they don’t talk about 
Bolde; by Julie Brown; 4/1/26 
My grandmother said it so matter-of-factly that it almost stopped the conversation. ... "I'm not afraid of it," she said. "I've had a very good life. When it's time, it's time." And she meant it. I believed her completely. But then, a few minutes later, she mentioned almost in passing that she hoped she wouldn't "get confused" at the end.

• That she hoped she'd know who was in the room.
• That she hoped her daughter—my mother—would be okay.
• That she'd been thinking about a falling-out with her sister decades earlier, something they'd never quite resolved.

None of it was framed as fear. It was framed as hoping. But the hoping was about something. ... What I've come to understand is that "not afraid of death" is usually an honest statement—and also an incomplete one. The fear of death in the abstract often does diminish with age. What doesn't diminish are the particular worries that live around it—about the in-between, about the people left behind, about the version of the ending they might get.

Integrating palliative care: The power of silence in oncology 
Oncology Nursing News; by Angela Thomas, MSN, APRN, AGPCNP-C, ACHPN; 3/31/26
Integrating palliative care principles into oncology requires the ability to allow silence to create a space where patients can process difficult news and feel truly seen. According to Angela Thomas, MSN, APRN, AGPCNP-C, ACHPN, these intentional pauses validate the patient’s experience and provide a necessary emotional release. By sitting in silence, providers acknowledge the gravity of the patient’s situation, which Thomas identifies as a core “heart issue” learned from palliative care and successfully integrated into the oncology setting. In a recent interview with Oncology Nursing News, Thomas, of Texas Oncology, discusses how practitioners can incorporate these techniques into their daily practice. 

California targeted in House Committee investigation of hospice fraud

The National Law Review; by Jeremy A. Avila, Sarah M. Hall, John M. Puente, Raja Sékaran, Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.; 3/31/26
On March 23, 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom requesting “documents and communications” surrounding the state’s oversight of its federally funded hospice programs. ... The letter cites the following in support of its allegations:

• ... a 1500 percent increase between 2010 and 2022, resulting in a total that is six times the national average;
• The number of hospice providers in Los Angeles County exceeding that of 36 states (and being 33 times greater than the number in the entire state of Florida);
• Alleged Medicare overbilling by $105 million by hospice providers in Los Angeles County in a single year;
• Instances of providers billing Medicare at a rate of $29,000 per patient for hospice patients in Los Angeles County (contrasted against a national average of $13,200 per patient annually);
• Eighteen hospice providers billing Medicare for 76,000 claims totaling nearly $600 million between 2021 and 2024, using a single doctor’s Medicare provider number; and
• An instance where more than 100 hospice and home health care agencies were registered to a single address in Los Angeles.

Editor's Note: The figures cited here underscore the scale and urgency of these allegations. Their impact reaches beyond California, touching hospice care nationwide and the patients and families you serve. Together, they point to serious potential failures in oversight, with far-reaching implications for program integrity, patient trust, and the integrity of hospice providers committed to ethical care.

FTC creates healthcare task force 
Healthcare Dive; by Rebecca Pifer Parduhn; 3/23/26

• The Federal Trade Commission is forming a new healthcare task force as regulators double down on combating anticompetitive behavior in the sector. 
• On Friday [3/21], Commissioner Andrew Ferguson directed FTC staff to create a new group to lead healthcare enforcement, create agency-wide investigation strategies, better identify legal cases where regulators can get involved and find new areas to crack down in the sector.
• The FTC hopes to expand the task force’s membership to include staff from other agencies, including the HHS and the Department of Justice, according to a release.

Inspiration from a hospice patient to a medical student [story in the article, "Students from various bacgrounds succeed with WWAMI]
University of Wyoming - Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho (WWAMI) Medical Education Program; by Communications Department; 3/31/26
[Various medical students' stories ...]

• Carlos Garcia: ... There have been many moments at the cancer center that influenced Garcia’s path into medical school and oncology. An interaction with a particular hospice patient has stuck with him. “She came up to me, gave me a hug and said, ‘Hey, I think this is the last time I'll see you here, but I want you to go out there, and you’re going to be a good doctor,’” Garcia says. “She had that faith back then that I could do and that I would do it.”

New CMS delivery models enable senior living providers to get paid for what they’re already doing 
McKnights Senior Living, Nashville, TN; by Kimberly Bonvissuto; 4/1/26 
Speakers at the 2026 National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care Spring Conference on Tuesday shared several new federal programs that offer senior living providers opportunities to showcase their value and to get paid for what they are already doing in chronic disease prevention and management. 

Most companies use AI but lack training to help employees work with it effectively 
Complete AI Training; 4/1/26 
72% of U.S. companies now use AI, but 55% lack the training to deploy it well. The gap between adoption and capability has become the defining challenge for 2025 strategy. ... Gusto research found that when employees lack approved AI tools, more than half find alternatives and use them anyway. This creates security risks, fragmented efforts, and frustration for leadership.

Woman pushes for end-of-life care protections after murder charge dropped 
WRDW/WAGT, Augusta/Harlem, GA; by Liz Owens; 3/30/26
 woman indicted for killing her mother with a lethal dose of morphine is pushing to change the law after prosecutors dropped the charge six months later. Rachel Waters returned to Harlem on what would have been her mother’s birthday to lay Marsha to rest and advocate for Marsha’s Law, which would provide legal protection for family members giving end-of-life care to dying loved ones. “Today is the first time I felt any meaningful sense of closure,” Waters said. “It’s very surreal. It was almost exactly a year ago that I came down to turn myself in after the indictment.”

You know, every old person knows what it is to be young, but no young person can know what it is to be old. Thank you for listening. ~ Quote from HBO’s The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 12, marker 44min 53sec