Literature Review

Cleveland Clinic grounds tech change in reliability and scalabilit: Sarah Hatchett, senior vice president and CIO at Cleveland Clinic, discusses change management and ongoing digital transformation in healthcare HealthTech; by Teta Alim; 10/21/26 Across industries, generative and agentic artificial intelligence seem to dominate headlines, ... “Healthcare doesn't need more technology for the sake of technology. It's all about scalable, reliable solutions that really improve care and create enterprise value,” Sarah Hatchett, senior vice president and CIO at Cleveland Clinic, tells HealthTech. She talks about how Cleveland Clinic prioritizes reducing friction for patients and clinicians and why stakeholder alignment is key to an IT project’s success.

It’s October, which means I’ve already planned 47 fall activities and completed exactly zero.

Arkansas man renews his vows to wife as his last wish KFSM 19 CBS, Bentonville, AR; by AJ Mendez; 10/22/26 Bryan and Terri Rose renewed their vows Wednesday, marking the first time a “Wish Upon a Wedding” event took place in Arkansas. Wish Upon a Wedding is a program similar to ‘Make a Wish’ that grants couples where one person has a terminal illness their last wishes. Bryan has Stage 4 colon cancer and was admitted to hospice earlier this week. Even through his terminal illness, he wanted to make sure his promises to Terri were restated.

Tuscora Stamp Club raises $4,500 for hospice: annual auction sold about 200 lots to support Ohio’s Hospice care for patients and families Your Ohio News; 10/22/26 The Tuscora Stamp Club raised $4,500 for Ohio's Hospice during its annual charity auction at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in New Philadelphia Oct. 20. The event brought together club members, local stamp dealers and collectors to support the organization's mission of providing care and comfort to patients and their families. ... The annual auction reflects the club's continuing partnership with Ohio's Hospice and its commitment to supporting the community through stamp collecting.

L.A. health care fraud takedown results in 15 defendants charged, including six medical professionals, with $2 billion in losses alleged United States Attorney's Office | Central District of California; 10/22/26 The Justice Department today announced charges against 15 defendants, including six medical professionals, for health care fraud schemes that collectively resulted in $2 billion in fraudulent claims to government and private health care programs, including sham substance abuse treatment programs, unnecessary artery treatments, and bogus hospice services. ... Hospice Fraud: 

Your living will could get you too much care, or too little: the living will doctors misread KevinMD.com; podcast by KevinMD; 10/21/26 When you can’t speak for yourself, a living will is supposed to speak for you. Too often, it doesn’t. Seventy percent of U.S. adults don’t have one, and those who do often keep it in a drawer at home. ...  80 percent of physicians equate the mere presence of an advance directive with a do not resuscitate (DNR) order. Mirarchi calls it the lethal glance, a split-second read by a clinician who has never met the patient. The errors go both ways: resuscitating people who never wanted it and failing to resuscitate people who chose full code. ...

Telling patient stories while maintaining trust Penn Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; by Bre Ransome; 10/20/26 Penn Medicine clinicians, scholars, and a determined medical student are building something the field has needed for decades—the framework for writing about patients with care. ... ... [Ashlan] Willett helped launch a collaboration among clinicians, scholars, and students at Penn and beyond, and became a co-author of a paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM) earlier this year, that invites others across the field to continue collaborating on a framework for sharing stories about patients with care for ethical complexities.

People who choose to end their lives Global Issues | Inter Press Service, Portland, OR; opinion by Joseph Chamie; 10/20/26 People who choose to end their lives through voluntary assisted dying typically face terminal, incurable, or debilitating conditions that cause severe physical or psychological suffering. Research on requests for medical assistance in dying and euthanasia shows that most individuals seeking these options have advanced, irreversible illnesses or incurable, debilitating conditions that cause severe suffering or diminish their autonomy, dignity, or the ability to engage in meaningful activities. Despite becoming legally permitted in an increasing number of countries, voluntary assisted dying remains controversial. The debate centers on a fundamental tension between respecting personal autonomy and relieving suffering, on the one hand, and protecting human life, on the other.

We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are. ~ Anaïs Nin

Feds hold back an additional $1.2 billion in California Medicaid reimbursements ArcaMax; by Ana Ceballos, Los Angeles Times; 10/20/26 The Trump administration is deferring an additional $1.2 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California, citing concerns about potential fraud in a state program that helps older adults and people with disabilities with everyday tasks. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said federal officials took action after they grew concerned about the rapid expansion of California's personal care services program in recent years. State officials were notified of the decision Tuesday, he said.

Child-specific bioethics: Review of pediatric palliative care ethics guidelines Nursing Ethics; by Christina Lamb and Dimitra V. Pouliopoulou; 10/17/26 ... Care for dying children needs to be consistently grounded in child philosophies. Recommendation: Expanding access to pediatric palliative care requires ethics education research toward pediatric-specific pedagogies and bioethics frameworks to support consistent, ethically robust, holistic, and child-centered care to improve access across clinical, international and interdisciplinary settings. This review study provides a comprehensive ethical analysis of ethical frameworks guiding pediatric palliative care with a focus on end-of-life care. We identified a lack of pediatric specific bioethics originating in pediatric theory and research informing and supporting pediatric palliative care delivery.Guest Editor's Note by Judy Zeringue: This international scholarly research article from the Nursing Ethics Journal reveals the need for a pediatric-specific bioethics framework to guide the care of dying children. This framework should be focused specifically on the unique needs of pediatrics, not taken from the same framework applied to adults at the end of life. A focus on pediatric specific ethics education and research is needed to optimize and provide consistent support in pediatric palliative care including care at the end of life. This ethically robust approach must be promoted to help close the gap to guide the care of dying children everywhere.

The debate: vertical integration, payvider, or world-class care—which path forward? | part one Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); podcast by Chris Comeaux; 10/21/26 What if hospice succeeds at the wrong strategy?  Chris Comeaux explores three paths for the future of hospice and palliative care: vertical integration, the payvider model, and world-class specialty care. In Part One of The Debate: Vertical Integration, Payvider, or World-Class Care—Which Path Forward?, Chris Comeaux confronts a defining question for healthcare leaders: What should our organizations become to best serve patients and families? With competition intensifying, financial pressures mounting, and workforce demands growing, he introduces three possible paths: build an Vertical Integration continuum of care, participate in financing as a Payvider, or make World-Class Hospice and Palliative Care the central strategy.

Post-acute with a focus on labor part 1 | accelerated deal flow in post-acute care JDSupra; by John Frehse and Christine Ishak; 10/20/26 Record Year, and a Bill Nobody Underwrote: Senior housing and care changed hands in 2025 at a pace the sector has not seen in more than a decade: 871 transactions worth $30.5 billion, with senior housing accounting for 59% of deals and skilled nursing accounting for 41% of deals (LevinPro LTC, January 2026). That followed a 2024 that had itself set a record, and the pace has not broken. Skilled nursing volume in the first quarter of 2026 ran 36% above the 2025 quarterly average, hospice posted its busiest quarter since 2021, and Medicaid home health set a record at 28 deals.