2025 CAHPS Honors Elite and Honors award winners
MatrixCare by ResMed; retrieved from the internet 8/1/25 
54 CAHPS Honors Elite Award Winners and 214 CAHPS Honors Award Winners are listed. These national recognitions are presented by HealthCare First, a part of MatrixCare. These awards are based on satisfaction scores from the Hospice Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) survey. "Honors Elite" status is awarded to those hospices that score above the national performance score on 100%, or all twenty-four, of the evaluated questions.
Editor's Note: We celebrate these significant achievements and thank you for the quality, expert care you provide each day! We recognize that this list is presented by MatrixCare and may not represent organizations served by other CAHPS Hospice Survey Approved Vendors.

• AHA recognizes hospitals and health systems for innovation, community well-being and quality of care
• The 2025 Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service, recognizing hospital and health systems that have distinguished themselves through efforts to improve the health and well-being of everyone in their communities, was presented to Fairview Health Services.
• The Dick Davidson NOVA Award, celebrating outstanding collaboration by hospitals and health systems to achieve healthier communities, was presented to Endeavor Health, IU Health, Mass General Brigham, MedStar Health and Rochester Regional Health. 
• The 2025 Quest for Quality Prize, honoring hospitals and health systems that exemplify excellence in delivering high-quality, safe and patient-centered care, was presented to Harford HealthCare. 
• The 2025 Circle of Life Award, focusing on the crucial data-driven innovations happening in palliative and end-of-life care, was presented to Gilchrist and Bristol Hospice — Hawaii. 
  
  

• Center for Hospice Care wins 2025 “Top Workplaces Industry Award,” a national recognition, Mishawaka, IN

• Shaw at Home Palliative Care Program wins the 2025 Association of Cancer Care Centers, Vail, CO
  
  
• Two Heart to Heart Hospice Texas Locations Earn Prestigious Level 5 Certification in 'We Honor Veterans' Program, Tyler, TX and Palestine, TX
  

Closing the gap: Addressing social determinants of health and racial disparities in hospice care 
Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); by Alyson Cutshall; 8/4/25
... While Americans’ health trajectories are inevitable at the time they become eligible for hospice services, SDOH (Social Determinants of Health) still play a major role for the patients and families our field is privileged to serve. ... [To] fully impact health equity, we must be cognizant of other examples of SDOH, such as racism and implicit bias.  Unfortunately, our collective field has not been as successful in addressing access to hospice care across differing racial and ethnic groups. ... Certainly, there are some pockets of improved access.  One Teleios member organization, Ancora Compassionate Care, recognized the alarming disparities within its community and set about to create change. Ancora leaders recognized that the Black community in their service area typically placed high trust in their religious leaders. To better understand their needs and preferences regarding end-of-life care and services, Ancora embarked on a "listening tour" to gather feedback and insights from these religious leaders. Using the wisdom imparted, Ancora adapted their care delivery to be more inclusive to the Black community.  As such, the organization is making incremental improvements in lessening the racial divide in access to hospice care.

Swimmers raise $37,000 for Hospice of St. Lawrence Valley 
North Country Now, Norwood, NY; 8/5/25 
A total of 42 swimmers took to the water Saturday, and raised over $37,000 for Hospice of St. Lawrence Valley. They were participating in the 15th Annual Swim A Mile for Hospice at Norwood Beach August 2. The fundraiser gave options of 1 mile and  1/2 mile courses. The top individual fundraiser was first-time participant Fonda Adderly, of Potsdam, who raised about $6,000 for Hospice.

After losing his wife, 92-year-old man turns grief into comfort for other 
Spectrum News 1 - Greece, NY; by Seth Voorhees; 8/4/25 
The loss of a spouse can be devastating. A Rochester area man is turning his personal grief into comfort for others. The gesture has special meaning for families of people in hospice care. Howard Jones has always dabbled in art. At 92, the Kodak retiree has made painting his full-time job. ... [His wife through 68 years,] Estella spent her final weeks at Hildebrandt Hospice Care Center, where staff noticed Howard Jones would pass the time by painting rocks. Someone told him the story of the cardinal, and how some believe their appearance is a sign that a departed loved one is near.  ... [Now, he paints] “every day, eight hours a day,” said Jones. ... “It’s all a matter of getting the bird to look right,” he said. ... “My hope is always that when someone takes one of the stones out of the basket, they can feel the emotion that went into painting it,” said Jones. Since he began keeping track in February, Howard Jones says he’s painted over 500 cardinals. “And that's kept me going,” he said.
Editor's Note: This demonstrates beautifully the "instrumental style of grieving" (identified by Ken Doka and Terry Martin in Grieving Beyond Gender) where men (and women) tend to grieve through actively doing something, in contrast to verbal and emotional expression. We described this more in our post, To Be or To Do? Women and Men's different styles of grieving.

CMS Final Rules for 2026: Becker's Summaries
Becker's has posted summaries and links to the complete rules for the following categories. These provide great comparisons and cross-referencing between different systems across the continuum of care.

• For inpatient rehab facilities, inpatient psychiatric facilities, and hospices
• CMS drops 3 final payment rules for 2026: 15 things to know
  Becker's Hospital Review; by Alan Condon; 8/4/25 
• For hospitals 
• CMS finalizes 2.6% pay bump for hospitals in 2026: 8 things to know
  Becker's Hospital Review; by Alan Condon; 7/31/25 
• For skilled nursing facilities
• CMS finalizes 3.2% pay bump for skilled nursing facilities: 5 notes
  Becker's Hospital Review; by Andrew Cass; 7/31/25  

Hospice of Marion County holds monthly Memory Cafes 
Marion Citizen; by Diane Renyhart; 7/30/25 
...  It is estimated that 15,000 Marion County residents are struggling with some form of dementia. There are over 600 Memory Cafes around the country, and we are fortunate to have one here in Ocala as part of the Dementia Education Program at Hospice of Marion County. The Memory Cafes are held the second Friday of each month at the Empath Health Hospice Elliot Center and feature special themes. The meeting room is decorated and the tables have centerpieces that often include balloons. ... Every meeting features special activities each month. The local Memory Café has partnered with Arts and Health Ocala Metro.

Telehealth use in palliative care has declined since pandemic, study finds 
McKnights Home Care; by Adam Healy; 8/5/25 
Medicare beneficiaries are generally using less telehealth during palliative care than during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some patient cohorts continue to have high rates of virtual care use, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open. ... “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth use for palliative care has declined slightly but continued to play a sizable role in outpatient palliative care, accounting for 18.2% of specialist encounters in 2023,” the researchers said. Telehealth may be best suited for patients with certain conditions, they noted. For instance, the study indicated that patients with poor-prognosis cancers — meaning cancers that commonly cause death, rare cancers with high mortality rates or solid tumors with concurrent nonlymphatic metastasis — may benefit the most from telehealth. Virtual care use was also high among psychiatry patients, the study found.

Terri Schiavo’s legacy: When to ethically stop life support 
Medscape; by Arthur L. Caplan; 8/30/25 
Hi. I’m Art Caplan. I'm at the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. Twenty years ago this month, from the time I'm talking with you, in March 2005, a young woman named Terri Schiavo was allowed to die. It was one of the most controversial, and probably the most important, end-of-life-care cases ever to unfold in the United States. ... Do we have to make a more precise diagnosis of permanent vegetative state before we get into arguments about what to do next? I do believe also that it's important, if you are dealing with someone who's terminally ill or has a serious illness, to get the discussion going early about who's in charge. We still have fights between husbands, families, sisters, and cousins coming in about who has veto power or decision-making power. The earlier we can establish who it is that the patient wants to speak for them if they can't, the better. 

Do’s and don’ts when a loved one is dying 
Psychology Today; by Jessica Schrader; 8/4/25 
In the not-so-distant 19th and early 20th centuries, death took place at home. Funeral parlors didn’t exist; the actual parlor in a home (usually the fanciest room) was used to lay out a dead loved one, conduct wakes, and so forth. Children grew up around death and were more comfortable with it than adults today. Currently, many adults have never even seen a dead or dying person.  That can make people so uncomfortable they avoid seeing their dying loved one or reaching out altogether. That may lead to regrets long after the loved one is gone. Healthy ways to avoid fears and regret are to gently confront your concerns, learn a few simple tactics, and offer presence and support instead. Here’s how: 

• Don’t stay silent, paralyzed because you don’t know what to do or say. ...
• Do be honest and make your struggle transparent: “I’m so sorry, I’m not sure what to say or I’m afraid it will be wrong. ...
• [Continue reading for more Do's and Don'ts]

[United Kingdom] Hospice to become 'first for LGBTQ+ people in UK' 
BBC News, Sussex Beacon; by Josh McLaughlin; 8/5/25 
A hospice in East Sussex has announced it is to become the UK's first dedicated hospice for the LGBTQ+ community. The move by Sussex Beacon, based in Brighton, has been dubbed a "landmark development" by NHS Sussex, aiming to combine inclusive care with expertise in specialist HIV care. The charity has been offering palliative and end-of-life care to people with HIV for more than 30 years, recently expanding its services to the wider LGBTQ+ community, regardless of HIV status. 

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~ Aristotle