DELTA NEWS DESK
HOSPICE. PHARMACY. UP TO THE MINUTE.


Hospices vary widely in prescribing of “comfort kit” medications
News Release
05/13/2022
When a person nearing the end of their life enters hospice care, their hospice agency’s doctors may prescribe a “comfort kit” of small amounts of medications that their caregivers can give them in case of urgent, distressing symptoms such as severe anxiety, agitation, delirium, nausea and more...

Five Wishes Announces New Digital Advance Directive - One Document for Life
PRNewswire
05/03/2022
Five Wishes, the country's most preferred advance care planning program (ACP), has partnered with Vynca, a leading palliative care solutions and advance care planning company, to offer Five Wishes Digital, a new lifetime product available for consumers, medical providers, and business partners for advance care planning...

Older people fret less about aging in place: AP-NORC Poll
Associated Press
04/27/2022
The older you are, the less you fret about aging in your own home or community. That’s a key insight from a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, which found that U.S. adults ages 65 or older feel much better prepared to “age in place” than those 50-64, who are mostly still in the final stretches of their working years...

How Far Do You Go When the Alternative Is Death?
NY Times
05/12/2022
My patient was so close. After emails to politicians and pharmaceutical executives, after a social media campaign and months spent swinging between hope and fear, Michael Forbes had won...

CMS Report: Concurrent Hospice, Curative Care a Winning Proposition
Hospice News
04/29/2022
The Medicare Advantage hospice carve-in has been the focus of much attention among providers, and many are watching closely for the demonstration’s outcomes...

COVID-19 again the third leading cause of death, while elderly deaths decrease
McKnight's Long Term Care News
04/25/2022
Mortality from COVID-19 increased overall by 0.7% in 2021 from 2020, but there have been shifts in who is severely affected by the disease, according to provisional data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Government watchdog: 1 in 4 older Americans on Medicare harmed during hospital stays
USA Today
05/12/2022
One in 4 older Americans covered by Medicare had some type of temporary or lasting harm during hospital stays before the COVID-19 pandemic, government investigators said in an oversight report published Thursday...

CMS report details health disparities among Medicare Advantage enrollees
Modern Healthcare
04/29/2022
Black, Indigenous and Alaska Native patients experienced the most significant disparities in clinical care among Medicare Advantage enrollees last year, according to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the RAND Corp...

Exploring the Health Effects of Ageism
NY Times
04/23/2022
Through more than three decades of research, the Yale psychologist Becca Levy has demonstrated that age discrimination can take years off one’s life...