The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) designed the Hospice Care Index (HCI) to paint a picture of care processes that occur between a patient’s admission and discharge, but as currently designed it may not be an effective measure of quality...

Stakeholders in the hospice space are optimistic that Congress will pass the recently reintroduced Palliative Care and Hospice Education Training Act (PCHETA). While some see the bill as a beacon of hope, sustainable change will likely require more than a single piece of legislation...

Hospice providers and patients are having difficulty procuring medications due to nationwide drug shortages, threatening quality of care and patients’ access to hospice. These include essential drugs for pain and symptom management...

If enacted, the recently reintroduced Palliative Care and Hospice Education Training Act (PCHETA) could make a dent in the recruitment barriers that hospices keep hitting. But clinical education will need a much larger boost to ensure a sustainable workforce, according to many providers...

Health worker burnout will intensify if healthcare employers, health insurance companies and communites fail to address the crisis, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy cautions in a report issued Monday...

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a 2.7% pay increase for hospice care for Fiscal Year 2023. However, that amount may be a drop in the bucket as COVID-19 headwinds rage, inflation surges and employee wages climb...

Last year, people 65 and older died from Covid at lower rates than in previous waves. But with Omicron and waning immunity, death rates rose again...

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) have reintroduced the Palliative Care and Hospice Education Training Act (PCHETA), designed to bolster the field’s shrinking workforce with federal support...

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...