Literature Review

Hospice of Wichita Falls hosts first Growing Through Grief Symposium KFDX Wichita Falls, TX; by Ashley Waters; 8/22/26 Hospice of Wichita Falls brought licensed professional counselors together for its first Growing Through Grief Symposium. ... "Grief as a child can really significantly impact their development growing up. So we want to try and mitigate that as much as possible and start working with them now," said Hospice of Wichita Falls Children's Program Specialist Sydney Reese. According to the National Alliance for Children's Grief, about 6 million children across the nation experience the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 18. Hospice of Wichita Falls was awarded the 2026 Grief Reach Grant to support childhood grief awareness efforts throughout Texoma [for helping professionals]. 

Hospice Wage Index, the Final Rule, and the signals CMS is sending | part one Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); pocast hosted by Chris Comeaux with Annette Kiser and Judi Lund Person The 2027 Hospice Final Rule is more than a reimbursement update—it’s a window into where Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) believes hospice care needs to go next. In Part One, host Chris Comeaux sits down with hospice regulatory experts Annette Kiser and Judi Lund Person to look beyond the numbers and “read the tea leaves” in CMS’s latest rule.  They unpack what hospice leaders need to understand about the Hospice Election Statement Addendum, the growing scrutiny of unrelated services and non-hospice Medicare spending, telehealth reporting, and the Service and Spending Variation Index (SSVI).  As Judi explains, CMS’s commentary and responses to industry feedback can reveal as much about the agency’s direction as the regulations themselves.

Hospice of Michigan receives more than $20k in donations following Josh & Jase visit ABC-13, Grand Rapids, MI; by Mary Dupuis; 8/14/26 The viral social media duo Josh & Jase have helped raise more than $20,000 for Hospice of Michigan's statewide pediatric hospice program this summer. The fundraising campaign was launched in support of the Jo Elyn Nyman Pediatric Hospice Endowment Fund. ... Josh Cauldwell-Clarke and Jase Riley became famous on social media for their travel videos reacting to American food, culture and exciting experiences. ... During their time in Grand Rapids, Josh and Jase spent time with pediatric hospice patients and their families at Hospice of Michigan. After their social media post about the visit, more than 350 donations flooded in to Hospice of Michigan from across the country. 

Treasure Coast Hospice launches new website to make hospice referrals easier for families and healthcare providers Cision PRWeb, Stuart, FL; by Treasure Coast Hospice; 8/11/26 Treasure Coast Hospice has launched a newly redesigned website featuring an enhanced online referral experience that makes it easier for healthcare providers, patients, and families to connect with hospice care. The new website was developed to remove common barriers people may face when searching for hospice information and to make the referral process more accessible, efficient, and easy to understand. ... One of the most significant updates is a new online referral form with two distinct pathways: one for healthcare professionals and another for patients and loved ones.

The healthcare partnership nobody is talking about: hospice + FQHCs | part twoTeleios Collaborative Network (TCN); podcast hosted by Chris Comeaux with Kyle Ahlenstorf; 8/14/26 What if one of the most promising partnerships in serious illness care has been hiding in plain sight? In Part Two of The Healthcare Partnership Nobody Is Talking About: Hospice + FQHCs, Chris Comeaux continues his conversation with Kyle Ahlenstorf about the largely untapped opportunity for hospice and palliative care organizations to collaborate with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs).  The discussion explores how hospice and palliative care can extend an FQHC's reach into the home while FQHCs bring an established infrastructure of primary care, behavioral health, care coordination, community health workers, and preventive services.  Together, these capabilities could create a stronger continuum of care for patients with serious and chronic illness. 

Reports from Duke University describe recent advances in managed care (the South had the lowest rates of hospice and palliative medicine-certified providers in the US, 2024): managed careInsurance Newsnet; by Staff; 8/13/26 A new study on Managed Care is now available. According to news reporting originating in Durham, North Carolina, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “To improve access to care for serious illness, policy makers need evidence on how workforce capacity aligns with the need for palliative care. This study evaluated the palliative care workforce and policy environments at the state level, using a new data source: the 2024 Center to Advance Palliative Care’s comprehensive Serious Illness Scorecard.” Funders for this research include US Department of Veterans Affairs, Duke University, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Durham Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discover and Practice Transformation (ADAPT) at the Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System. Read the study here.

[Portugal] The ethical and psychosocial dimensions of palliative care in prison: A scoping reviewJournal of Bioethical Inquiry; by Ana Gehl-Costa, P. Reis-Pina; 7/26With prison populations expanding and aging, palliative care (PC) is an urgent concern. People in prison (PIP) face chronic illness, mental health conditions, and social vulnerabilities, creating ethical and psychosocial challenges to dignified end-of-life (EOL) care... Ethical domains included structural neglect of PIP with life-limiting illness, barriers to compassionate release, compromised autonomy, denial of death in prison culture, and inadequacies in care quality and access. Psychosocial domains encompassed stigma, mistrust, isolation, existential suffering, and fractured social bonds. PIP-led hospice models offered companionship but raised tensions around labour, confidentiality, and the normalization of death in custody... Prison-based PC requires systemic reforms, staff training, family and advocacy involvement, and legal safeguards to ensure equitable, compassionate, and dignified EOL care.Publisher's note: This article was included in the August 2026 issue of End-of-Life Care Behind Bars - Current Thinking, by Barry R. Ashpole.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. ~Michelangelo

Sunday newsletters focus on headlines and top read stories of the last week (in order) - enjoy!

Empowering elderly Chinese Americans: Advance care planning educational workshopGeriatric Nursing; by Mengyao Zhao, Tammy Tyree; 7/26Advance care planning (ACP) is important to ensure an individual's values and preferences are followed at the end-of-life (EOL). However, elderly Chinese Americans have a much lower advance directive (AD) completion rate than the national average. This quality improvement project aimed to improve ACP engagement and AD completion rates among elderly Chinese Americans at a local senior center in Arizona. Three monthly culturally tailored educational workshops were conducted, and ... data analysis showed a significant increase in ACP engagement scores over time ...  Additionally, AD completion rates rose by 220% after the intervention. These findings indicate that culturally tailored educational workshops can effectively improve ACP engagement and AD completion rates in elderly Chinese Americans.

Goal-concordant care for older adults with advanced heart failure: A retrospective cohort studyPalliative Medicine; by Sarah Godfrey, Maryjane Farr; 7/26Older adults with advanced heart failure experience significant morbidity and mortality and face higher complication rates from advanced therapies. Of 212 patients, 91 (42.9%) underwent evaluation for advanced therapies, though few received a heart transplant (16, 7.5%) or left ventricular assist device (32, 15.1%). Most (148, 69.8%) had only one palliative physician visit. One hundred thirty-nine (65.6%) died, often in the hospital (55, 40%) and with life-sustaining therapy in the last 24 h (73, 52.5%). Most (167, 78.8%) received goal-concordant care, with the main reasons for discordance being the desire for advanced therapy (33, 15.6%) and complications post-implantation affecting quality of life (9, 4.2%). Conclusions: Few older adults received advanced therapies, and palliative care was underutilized, with many patients seeing palliative care only once. Most received goal-concordant care, but decisions were often made late, highlighting the need for earlier, longitudinal palliative care for these vulnerable patients.

[Israel] Existential suffering at the end of life in long-term care: A critical essay on recognition, dignity, and witnessPalliative Care & Social Practice; by Anat Romem, Rachel Bardach; 7/26Existential suffering is widely acknowledged in palliative care, but it remains inconsistently recognized and unevenly addressed in long-term care. This critical essay argues that the gap is not caused by clinician indifference, but by a persistent mismatch between whole-person ideals and care systems organized around measurable symptoms, risk management, task completion, and professional uncertainty. [This] ... essay identifies three interrelated shortcomings: the reduction of suffering to medically actionable symptoms; the depersonalizing effects of institutional routines on frail older adults; and the absence of shared existential literacy across interdisciplinary teams. The essay also cautions against romanticizing suffering or treating meaning-making as a clinical expectation. It proposes a practical framework of recognition, dignity, and witness: recognizing biography and identity as clinically relevant; protecting dignity in the ordinary details of care; and enacting witness ... Long-term care cannot resolve every existential wound, but it can reduce existential neglect by treating personhood as a core quality indicator of palliative care.