Tuesday's Tools: Today's Encouragement
Hospice & Palliative Care Today; by Joy Berger; 9/8/26

Calling all readers to our Tuesday’s Tools series. We're highlighting tool included with your free subscription to help you use our news to improve the care you provide.

This week’s tool: Today's Encouragement

It's the enthusiastic line so many of you tell us: "I start my day with your Today's Encouragement!" Tucked at the close of every issue, this single quote meets the day itself, meant to travel with you into meetings, decisions, interactions, and ways you life life well. Some mornings it's timeless wisdom from Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi, Whitman, or Lincoln. Other mornings it's someone whose words resonate with our work, or the calendar turning itself into encouragement — the first hush of autumn, the return of spring light, a holiday. Heritage months get their own space too: Black History Month, Pride Month, Juneteenth. Collectively, we join together with celebrations and tragedies. Sports. Poetry. And Fridays tend to go light — a laugh about Halloween candy or spring allergies to close the business week and send you into the weekend.

Whatever the day, the quote meets you as you greet the day — with insight, inspiration, humor and meaning.

Easy ways to use Today's Encouragement:

1. Your inbox: the final entry in each day's issue.
2. Search: login from our homepage, click "Search" and type a keyword or author.
3. Share it: forward the email, or use the LinkedIn share button on our webpage.

Let's start today: click here.

The hospice moratorium: what CMS is really signaling about the future | part two 
Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); podcast hosted by Chris Comeaux with Dr. Jennifer Kennedy; 9/4/26 
The hospice moratorium may eventually end—but the era of heightened scrutiny it represents is likely just beginning. In Part Two of The Hospice Moratorium: What CMS Is Really Signaling About the Future, Chris Comeaux and Cordt Kassner continue their conversation with Dr. Jennifer Kennedy, Vice President for Quality, Standards and Compliance at CHAP, to examine what hospice could look like after the moratorium is lifted.  Jennifer predicts that new providers and changes of ownership will face a fundamentally different environment—one shaped by more rigorous enrollment screening, greater scrutiny, and an expanding use of data to identify potential risk.

Senior health, home health & hospice stocks Q2 results
Fox-47; 9/3/26
The end of the earnings season is always a good time to take a step back and see who shined (and who didn’t). Let’s take a look at how senior health, home health & hospice stocks fared in Q2, ... The 7 senior health, home health & hospice stocks we track reported a mixed Q2. As a group, revenues missed analysts’ consensus estimates by 0.5%. Amidst this news, share prices of the companies have had a rough stretch. On average, they are down 8.4% since the latest earnings results. 

• The Pennant Group (NASDAQ:PNTG) ...
• Best Q2: BrightSpring Health Services (NASDAQ:BTSG) ...
• Weakest Q2: AdaptHealth (NASDAQ:AHCO) ...
• Addus HomeCare (NASDAQ:ADUS) ...
• Brookdale (NYSE:BKD) ...

Over the past year, investors have been forced to repeatedly answer the same question: what is the market’s biggest risk? The answer has changed several times, and each shift has reshaped market leadership.

Hospice care has increased in Minnesota, but some nurses are set to strike 
MINNPOST; by Maddie Robinson; 9/4/26 
Allina Health hospice nurses are demanding better pay and more manageable caseloads as demand for care has grown statewide. After more than a year of contract negotiations and on the heels of a one-day strike in early July, Allina Health hospice nurses are set to strike for one week starting September 11 after union members said the hospital did not adequately address employee concerns about raises, staffing and caseloads. More than 60 Allina nurses in the SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa union voted unanimously to authorize the strike August 21. After additional contract negotiations with a federal mediator a week later did not pan out for either party, the union announced on August 31 their 10-day notice to strike, during which time contract negotiations will continue. 

Inpatient palliative care utilization in gynecological malignancies: a national inpatient study 
Medscape; by Lydia Francis, LF and Benjamin Easow, MD; 9/3/26
Conclusions: Only 1 in 6 hospitalizations for gynecological malignancies had documented palliative care, reflecting underutilization in a population with substantial supportive care needs. Palliative care concentration among older, higher-acuity admissions suggests late referral rather than early integration. These findings support timely palliative care expansion in gynecological malignancies to improve symptom management and goal-concordant care.

Central Illinois nursing home fined $25K by state after resident's death 
Pekin Daily Times, Perioa, IL; by Zach Roth; 9/6/26 
A Canton nursing home was fined $25,000 after a resident died last year after being taken off medication that was prescribed to prevent blood clots. ... On March 31, 2025, a verbal order was given to stop providing Xarelto because the woman began hospice care one month prior. ... The care plan noted that she had a history of strokes and that medication needed to be provided as ordered by her doctor. ... The hospice's owner said that the power of attorney had contacted them after the woman had died asking about the medication situation, noting that they hadn't seen anything to show that her Xarelto had been discontinued. The hospice owner also said that they hadn't received an order from a hospice physician or nurse to discontinue it. 
Editor's Note: Details are more complex than space allows in the short summary above. A verbal order to stop a medication, without a documented physician directive or clear communications with the family, is a quiet risk hiding in plain sight at hospice transitions — one that can hasten death rather than ease it. Deprescribing has its place in end-of-life care, but only through structured, physician-ordered, shared decision-making. Does your hospice's process protect against this, or could it happen to one of your patients tomorrow? 

LeadingAge, coalition partners tell CMS: don’t punish good Medicare providers 
LeadingAge, Washington, DC; contact Colleen Knudsen; 8/31/26 
In a joint sign-on letter led by LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit and mission-driven providers of aging services and submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today, a coalition of 19 partners representing hospitals, physician and clinician practices, post-acute and long-term care providers, home health and hospice agencies, suppliers, and the beneficiaries served by all, warn the agency that the proposed changes to Medicare provider enrollment provisions, included in the Calendar Year (CY) 2027 Home Health Prospective Payment System (PPS) Rule, risk penalizing legitimate providers and could result in limiting beneficiary access to care. The coalition fundamentally supports CMS’ responsibility to protect the Medicare Trust Fund and beneficiaries from fraud, waste, and abuse. However, ...

Hospice has ‘strong’ 2026 M&A outlook 
Hospice News; by Jim Parker; 9/4/26 
Hospice merger and acquisition volume has regained momentum and is rapidly approaching pre-pandemic levels. For hospice, 48 deals took place in 2019, according to the M&A advisory firm The Braff Group. This was followed by the record-breaking years of 2020 through 2022, in which nearly 70 hospice transactions completed annually. Then hospice M&A entered a lull. In 2023, only 25 deals took place. The market began to pick up steam again in the fourth quarter of 2025, and that has continued through 2026, according to Mark Kulik, senior managing director of the M&A advisory firm The Braff Group.

One Senior Care acquires PACE North: partnership will support continued growth of PACE program in rural Michigan 
PR.com | dealroom.com, Erie, PA; Press Release; 9/1/26 
One Senior Care—a leading rural PACE provider—today announced its acquisition of PACE North in Traverse City, Michigan. The partnership strengthens One Senior Care’s commitment to expanding the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) in rural areas, allowing older adults eligible for both Medicare & Medicaid to receive medical and support services. One Senior Care currently serves more than 1,200 participants across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky, with a focus on rural and medically underserved communities. With this partnership, the organization’s footprint will expand to Michigan and include Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, and Wexford counties, as well as parts of Antrim and Manistee counties.

Caregiver's relationship with grandmother goes viral 
Today Show; by Morgan Chesky; 9/7/26 
Twenty-four-year-old Grace Yockey and her grandmother Vava, have gone viral online for their adorable adventures together as roommates, all while shining a powerful light on young caregivers. NBC’s Morgan Chesky reports for TODAY.

Dolly Parton’s 10 leadership lessons for business executives 
Forbes; by Edward Segal; 8/27/26 
Dolly Parton, who [recently died] at age 80, demonstrated her expertise in managing and communicating about a crisis. She also leaves behind several leadership lessons for business executives. ...

• Be distinctive ...
• Stay true to your values ...
• Rely on experts ...
• Use your power to help others ...
• There are different ways to measure success ...

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows. ~ Ralph Marston