Literature Review

Enhancing hospice care: St. Gabriel's Joins LifeCare family Investors Hangout; by Caleb Price; 9/23/25 St. Gabriel's Hospice & Palliative Care has officially become part of the LifeCare Home Health (LCHH) family, a significant step in strengthening hospice care across Texas. This collaboration aligns with LifeCare's ongoing mission to expand its hospice offerings, particularly after the recent acquisitions of Fairmont Hospice and Valley Hospice. ... Founded by healthcare executive Chris Cain, St. Gabriel's Hospice has been dedicated to providing compassionate end-of-life care since 2012. The agency proudly serves approximately 300 patients with a devoted team of over 200 professionals. 

[Canada] Availability of respite care almost triples a palliative care patient’s chance of dying at home EurekAlert! - AAAS; News Release by McGill University; 9/22/25 Access to respite services for family caregivers increases a palliative care patient’s probability of dying at home almost threefold, according to a McGill University-led study. Previous surveys suggest most Canadians with a serious illness would prefer to spend the end of their lives at home. ... Funded by Quebec’s health ministry as part of its action plan for equitable access to quality palliative and end-of-life care, the study set out to find which factors matter most in helping patients avoid a transfer to a hospital or palliative care centre in their final days. Respite care – professional help that allows family caregivers to take short breaks –emerged as the strongest predictor, with patients 2.7 times more likely to die at home when it was available.

What makes a good death? GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast for Every Healthcare Professional; by Alex Smith with Karen Steinhauser, Rasa Mikelyte and Edison Vidal; 9/18/25What is a “good death”? How should we define it, and who gets to decide? Is the concept of a “good death” even useful? ... In today’s podcast, we are honored to have Karen join us to discuss this pivotal study and the nature of a “good death”. We are also joined by Rasa Mikelyte and Edison Vidal, co-authors of a recent study comparing the perspectives of people with dementia in the UK and Brazil on what constitutes a good death. In addition to exploring the nature of a good death and their individual studies, we will discuss:

Study finds hospice providers “game” Medicare Payment Cap, but with modest impact on costs Penn LDI - Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; by Julia Hinkcley, JD; 9/16/25 ... Each year, about half of Medicare beneficiaries who die receive hospice services. A new study by LDI Senior Fellow and Director of Research Norma Coe and her colleague David Rosenkranz shows that some hospice agency decision-making may be intended to increase payments by undercutting the annual revenue cap that Medicare imposes. But this “gaming” of the payment rules creates only modest increases in both hospice enrollment and spending. The study’s findings also support MedPAC’s view that wage index-adjusting the cap could make it more equitable across hospice programs, but the authors caution that the MedPAC proposal to reduce the cap by 20 percent might lead some hospice providers to close, and therefore requires more analysis.

How Tampa Bay is rethinking healthcare for long-term growth Capital Analytics Associates (CAA); by Andrea Teran; 9/16/25 Tampa Bay continues to attract tens of thousands of new residents each year, while Florida’s senior population is on pace to double by 2050. In response, healthcare leaders across the region are being pushed to rethink how care is delivered, expanded, and made more equitable. ... [A session titled] "Future-Proofing Health: What Tampa Bay’s Rise as a Global Healthcare Hub Means for Communities" ... brought together executives from Tampa General Hospital, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Empath Health, and Gulfside Healthcare Services. Over the course of the discussion, panelists explored five central themes: collaboration, access, innovation, workforce development, and the region’s evolving healthcare identity.

Has human life expectancy already peaked?Vice; by Luis Prada; 9/10/25 For most of the 20th century, human life expectancy skyrocketed. Advancements in hygiene science, a wide variety of medical innovations and discoveries ... have all helped our collective life expectancies tremendously. According to a new study, however, we may have topped out. In the study, published in PNAS and spotted by Science Alert, an international team of researchers crunched the numbers on people born between 1939 and 2000 in 23 high-income countries, using six different forecasting models.Editor's Note: I recall a hospice CE conference around 2005, where a healthcare data statistician presented projections on mortality trends. Based on the previous century’s gains, the data suggested that babies born then could live well past 100—with 120 years as a realistic possibility. This new study raises the provocative question of whether those optimistic forecasts may already have reached their limits.

The state where all hospitals have perfect health equity scores  Becker's Hospital Review; by Mariah Taylor; 9/2/25 Delaware is the only state where 100% of its hospitals scored perfectly on health equity measures, according to CMS data. The agency used hospital commitment to health equity data, such as social determinants of health data, race, ethnicity, language, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation and disability status to determine access to equitable care and coverage. Facilities were ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score. CMS then compiled a ranking of states based on the percentage of facilities that received each score. Data was collected between January and December 2023 and was last updated Aug. 6. 

Over 240 advocates rally in DC for the future of care at home: National Alliance for Care at Home hosts Inaugural Advocacy Week on Capitol Hill National Alliance for Care at Home, Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC; Press Release; 9/12/25 More than 240 care at home care advocates from across the country met with over 275 congressional offices this week to discuss key legislative and regulatory priorities for expanding access to home-based care services. The meetings were part of the 2025 National Alliance for Care at Home’s inaugural Advocacy Week. Alliance Advocacy Week brings together leaders, advocates, and supporters to unite as one voice for care at home, driving positive legislative change and shaping the future of care to ensure broader access to the life-changing home care services for all Americans. 

Perspectives of hospice medical directors on challenges and solutions for improving care for persons living with dementias (PLWD) and their caregiversAmerican Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care; by Taeyoung Park, Abhay Tiwari, Elizabeth Luth, Yongkang Zhang, Simone Prather, Micah Toliver, Giancarlo Chuquitarco, Veerawat Phongtankuel; 8/25A larger proportion of PLWD [persons living with dementia] outlive the 6-month hospice eligibility requirement compared to other terminally ill patients, which leads to high rates of hospice live discharge. Hospice medical directors (HMDs) are physicians with unique insights into both the clinical aspects of care and the administrative and regulatory guidelines of hospice care delivery. To address these challenges, HMDs suggested (1) establishing a dementia-specific hospice program, (2) extending hospice benefit availability for PLWD, and (3) creating a step-down service for families experiencing live discharge from hospice. HMD participants suggested providing additional supports and/or reforming the current Medicare hospice benefits to better address end-of-life care for PLWD, who may require prolonged and intensive end-of-life support.

Caregiving under the Medicare Hospice Benefit JAMA Internal Medicine - Viewpoint Agind and Health; by Helen P. Knight, MD; Richard E. Leiter, MD, MA; Harry J. Han, MD; 9/8/25 As palliative care physicians, we frequently refer patients to hospice care. When we do so, we often worry about them. How will they and their families manage custodial care—the day in, day out, physical and financial demands of caregiving—on top of navigating the inherent challenges of end of life? We know that high-quality hospice agencies provide patients and their families with invaluable support for symptomatic, emotional, and spiritual needs. But in the US, due to constraints of Medicare reimbursement, hospice agencies provide only limited custodial care support; this lack of assistance often is an unwelcome surprise to our patients and families and profoundly shapes their end-of-life experience.

NGHS breaks ground on philanthropy-funded hospice house Access WDUN, Gainesville, GA; by Caleb Hutchins; 9/9/25 Northeast Georgia Health System held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday morning for a philanthropy-funded hospice house near Gainesville. ... The project, which is expected to open in fall of 2026, is the first philanthropy-funded facility in NGHS’ history. Christopher Bray, chief philanthropy officer of the Northeast Georgia Health System Foundation, called the Stephens’ more-than $5 million donation, which kick-started the project, game-changing for the foundation and the health system at large.

Keepers of the quiet goodbye: Meet the people who pulled off a hospice miracle by overcoming society’s fear of homelessness and death itself The Oberserver, Sacramento, CA; by Scott Thomas Anderson; 9/3/25 Inside the decade-long struggle to make Joshua’s House a reality in Sacramento: Craig Dresang has lived in the shadow of death since he was 8 years old. Dresang was in third grade when his mother, Joyce, was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. At almost the same moment, his mom’s best friend was also given a devastating cancer diagnosis. She was gone six months later — an outcome that kept flashing in Dresang’s young mind. ...  ... [Scroll ahead in time.] The child who could never run from death became the professional willing to confront it. ...  [Working with YoloCares in Davis, CA, Dresang met] Marlene von Friedrichs-Fitzwater, a woman on a mission to create the first hospice shelter for unhoused people on the West Coast.

The hidden crisis in serious illness care and how we fix itMedCityNews; by Dr. Mihir Kamdar; 9/7/25 Every year, millions of Americans with serious illnesses find themselves caught in a dangerous limbo: not sick enough to qualify for hospice, but far too ill to be served by our traditional healthcare system. The result is care that’s expensive, fragmented, and often traumatic. These patients are shuffled between a revolving door of emergency rooms and ICUs, enduring a cascade of aggressive interventions that don’t match their goals or improve their quality of life. This approach not only undermines quality, it drives healthcare spending through the roof, particularly in the last year of life. This is the hidden crisis in serious illness care. And it’s getting worse. At the root of the problem is what many in the field call the “hospice cliff.” ...