Literature Review

Viral moment: Hospice worker reunites with former mentor for touching bedside serenade FaithIt, by Kelsey Straeter; 4/23/24In Austinburg, Ohio, at the Austinburg Nursing & Rehab Center, a video capturing a deeply moving moment has gone viral, striking a chord with over half a million viewers. The footage shows hospice worker Joshua Woodard singing a heartfelt rendition of “How Great Thou Art” to his former mentor, Mary Redmond, just days before her peaceful passing. ... Decades ago, Mary Redmond was not only a cherished voice and piano teacher in her community but also a vibrant member of the local arts scene, starring in productions such as “Hello, Dolly!” and “The Music Man.” ... One of those lives was a young Joshua Woodard ... She became his first voice coach, leaving a lasting impression that endured through the years.

Behind the stethoscope: Exploring nursing ethics Noozhawk, Santa Barbara County, by Green Shoot Media; 4/22/24 The American Nurses Association developed a Code of Ethics for Nurses in the 1950s. It has been revised over the years to respond to technological advances and changes in society and the nursing field. Gallup takes a poll every year asks how the public ranks various professions for having high honesty and ethics. For 22 straight years, nurses come in as the most respected in terms of honesty and ethics. In 2024, 78% of the poll takers perceived them as honest.

FBI, DEA search Angel Bright Home Health offices Monday, along with state Medicare fraud unit 3NEWS, Corpus Christi, TX, by Ana Tamez and Lexis Greene; 4/22/24 The FBI searched the Angel Bright Home Health Inc. offices Monday morning. FBI Public Affairs Officer Connor Hagan confirmed FBI-Houston agents were partnering with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Texas Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) on an operation on Holly Road. ... 3NEWS found about a dozen agents at the home-health and hospice agency's office throughout the day Monday. At about 1:15 p.m., they began carting out boxes filled with documents and loading them into an unmarked box truck.

WHO unveils 10 patient safety rights

Community partnership with Hinds Hospice brings supportYourCentralValley.com - MedWatch Today; by Juanita Adame; 4/22/24Facing difficult end-of-life decisions for loved ones is difficult. Community Regional Medical Centers has partnered with Hinds Hospice to bring in an extra layer of support to patients and their families inside the hospital. The services are for patients who cannot be cared for at the home during their end-of-life journey. “We started looking at institutions that could partner with us around delivering inpatient hospice care, not only to reduce our length of stay but to be able to provide a higher level of care for patients in hospice,” said Tina Gulbronsen, VP of Capacity Management at Community Medical Centers. “So this change means that there are some patients that can’t be discharged safely  because they are in some sort of crisis.”

20M fewer Medicaid enrollees means trouble for providersModern Healthcare, by Nona Tepper; 4/23/24Over the past year, states have removed more than 20 million beneficiaries from Medicaid after suspending eligibility redeterminations during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Thousands of those people are Clinica Family Health patients. The Lafayette, Colorado-based community health center felt the pain of lost reimbursements when patients went from having Medicaid coverage to being uninsured, a fate that has befallen almost one-fourth of these former Medicaid enrollees nationwide, according to KFF. Clinica Family Health responded with cutbacks but is still in the hole. 

Marijuana Legalization Review: A guide for employers in a complex legal landscapeForbes, by Alonzo Martinez; 4/19/24As marijuana legalization sweeps across the United States, employers face a complex legal landscape regarding its use among employees. What was once a clear-cut issue of termination for positive drug tests has evolved into a complex assessment, with federal, state, and local laws offering conflicting guidance on how to navigate marijuana use in the workplace.

Md. health dept. processed 1.5 million Medicaid enrollees in 12 months; one month left in ‘unwinding’Maryland Matters, by Danielle J. Brown; 4/19/24... Prior to the pandemic people with Medicaid insurance had to reapply annually. Medicaid terminations were paused over the COVID pandemic in order to ensure people were covered during a global health crisis. But starting in 2023, Medicaid re-enrollments were no longer automatic, and people had to reenroll in the program to continue coverage in a period often referred to as the ‘Medicaid unwind.’ ... At the start of the unwinding period, the data show that there were about 1,787,000 people enrolled in Medicaid in March 2023. A year later, there are 1,690,000 people covered by the program. ... But most of the terminations are due to what are called “procedural terminations,” which means that someone either did not start or did not complete their Medicaid reapplication. ... People with procedural terminations have short window after losing coverage when they can reapply to Medicaid and get covered again if they are still eligible.  

Change in long-term care: Nursing homes across U.S. closing limaohio.com, by Precious Grundy; 4/19/24... According to the American Health Care Association website, more than 1,000 nursing homes have closed in the United States since 2015. ... According to the Population Reference Bureau website, in 2050 the population older than 65 will increase from 58 million (in 2022) to 82 million in just a few decades. The topic of long-term care will remain in questions. The American Health Care Association also said nursing homes across the United States have closed due to staffing shortages. ... Older adults now have the option of a home health aide, assisted living facilities and family caregivers.Editor's Note: How is this trend playing out in your service area? How do these closures impact your referral sources? Your hospice patients in skilled nursing facilities and memory care units? Accuity of patient care needs in the home, assisted living?  Hospital-in-the-home? The palliative care services you provide?

Hospice nurse plays instrumental role in patient’s joy Scottsdale Progress, by Lin Sue Flood; 4/20/24 You see it at every symphony performance. People so enraptured by the music — their eyes close and their fingers dance in the air. Stuart Brown is one of those people. But as illness began to limit his mobility, the 81-year-old Scottsdale man relinquished the thought of ever attending a live concert again. That’s when his Hospice of the Valley nurse secretly reached out to the Phoenix Symphony with a request to hold a small private concert in his Scottsdale home.

Death Cafes: Where people talk mortality over tea and cake The Week UK, by Chas Newkey-Burdent; 4/18/24 Once a month, in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, people are gathering to eat cake and talk about the typically taboo topic of death. At Death Cafes, said Emma Freud in The Times, people with a range of interests in the subject come together to discuss "the end of life experience in any of its forms,"  ... After joining a Death Cafe in Willesden, northwest London, Gaby Wine wrote in The Jewish Chronicle that it was "heart-warming" that "while not everyone agrees with one another, everyone shows great respect."

AI-generated draft replies integrated into health records and physicians’ electronic communication JAMA Network; by Ming Tai-Seale, PhD, MPH; Sally L. Baxter, MD, MSc; Florin Vaida, PhD; et al; 4/15/24Objective: To investigate the association between GenAI-drafted replies for patient messages and physician time spent on answering messages and the length of replies.Conclusions and Relevance: In this QI study, GenAI-drafted replies were associated with significantly increased read time, no change in reply time, significantly increased reply length, and some perceived benefits. 

Increasing Hospice CAHPS scores through enhanced caregiver training Hospice News, by Jim Parker; 4/19/24 Improving education and training for family caregivers may give hospices’ quality scores a boost. Maryland-based Hospice of the Chesapeake has introduced a standardized caregiver training program designed to enhance the work they had previously done in this area. After a review of scientific literature, it became clear that nationally, caregiver training was spotty, and this affected families’ perceptions of the care their loved one received, Monica Ferebee, clinical manager of hospice at Hospice of the Chesapeake ... More than 70% of hospice patients are primarily cared for by untrained family caregivers with no medical background, Ferebee found. She led Chesapeake’s change project to address these concerns, and thereby improve performance on Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys.