Raising the standard of Arizona’s dementia care 
Lovin' Life; by Lin Sue Flood; 9/7/25 
Arizona is setting a bold new standard to better support families impacted by dementia. A groundbreaking state mandate requires all memory care facilities to provide up to 12 hours of specialized dementia training to their staff, plus four hours of continuing education each year. This extensive training combines online video modules with hands-on, in-person skills sessions. Hospice of the Valley’s experienced Dementia Team is leading the way as one of the agencies the Arizona Department of Health Services has approved to deliver this comprehensive training. The nonprofit organization is unique in offering it as a free community service.

The hidden crisis in serious illness care and how we fix it
MedCityNews; 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.” ...

Agnesian HealthCare Foundation 2025 Charity Open has successful year 
Envision, Fond du Lac, WI: Press Release; 9/8/25 
The Agnesian HealthCare Foundation recently hosted its 37th annual Charity Open, ... raising  more than $525,000 – making this one of the most successful years. Proceeds from this year’s event are supporting SSM Health at Home Hospice and SSM Health Cancer Care services within the greater Fond du Lac area – helping ensure that all patients have access to these vital services regardless of their ability to pay.

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. ... Von Friedrichs-Fitzwater shared in a 2016 speech, “As a cancer survivor myself, I could not even imagine what that would be like. … Hospitals are typically discharging them out onto the streets because there isn’t any place for them to go.” ...

A culture shift supports disease-specific programs 
American Nurse; by Elisabeth Rodgers, Kathy Watts, Krissy Feinauer, Lauri Speirs, Jessica Aguilar, and Tessa Watson; 9/8/25 
An infrastructure built around a single department leads to success. Takeaways:

• In its journey to becoming a high-reliability organization, a healthcare system incorporated collective teamwork into disease-specific and advanced certifications, driving continuous process improvement.
• Centralized in one department, these certifications—including acute myocardial infarction, patient blood management, sepsis, and stroke—foster innovation, collaboration, and operational efficiency.
• Supported by executive leadership and multidisciplinary teamwork, this collective approach promotes care standardization and enhances patient outcomes. 

30 jolly Santas and Mrs. Clauses are in KC this weekend. Why they may make you cry 
The Kansas City Star; by Eric Adler; 9/6/25 
On Friday morning, inside a convention room at the Hotel Savoy in Kansas City, Santa pulled up a chair to tell a story or two about some of the children, and even adults, he'd visited to bring a last moment of joy. As he spoke, some 21 other Santas, elves and eight Mrs. Clauses from Kansas, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin, some 13 states took to other tables with coffee and muffins for a Santa America symposium about to begin. ... "The difference going in," said Boydston, the nonprofit's current president, "we know what we're going into. We know this is a terminal child. This may be the last time a family gets a smile. This may be the last happy moment." Or maybe it's a visit to a parent who is in hospice, leaving a child behind. ... In those sensitive moments when it doesn't - or for sensitive children - these Santas show up, often at their homes: For a sick child, for a dying child, for grieving children or even worried children whose parent, in the military, may be headed off for deployment. ...

Brain scan measures aging rate
NIH News in Health; 9/8/25
Biologically speaking, some people age faster than others. Your aging rate can affect your health and disease risks. If you knew this rate, you might be able to work with your doctor to slow the aging process. A [Duke University] research team developed a way to measure aging based on a single brain scan. The team drew on their earlier studies, where they devised a way to measure biological aging using blood tests [and] combined scores with MRI scan data... [Results] accurately predicted how quickly a person’s ability to think and remember weakened with age. It also could predict a person’s risk of future disease and death.
Publisher's note: I wonder if this tool might someday be incorporated into hospice eligibility/prognosis criteria?

CDC Releases 2025/2026 flu vaccine recommendations 
LeadingAge; Press Release; 9/3/25 
The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) on August 28, 2025 approved recommendations for flu vaccines for the 2025/2026 flu season. ... A key concern for LeadingAge members is whether COVID vaccine will be available for adults working in LeadingAge member communities who may choose vaccination, as it is widely believed that Medicare and private insurances will likely cover vaccines only for populations for which the shot is recommended. ... At this time, a flu vaccine is recommended for all individuals over the age of 6 months, with high-dose or adjuvanted flu vaccines recommended for individuals aged 65 years and older. Flu season is considered to run October 1 – March 31 each year ...

Where AI can make the biggest impact for nurses 
Becker's Health IT; by Ella Jeffries; 9/2/25 
Artificial intelligence in nursing is often framed as a way to cut paperwork. But nurse informatics leaders told Becker’s its potential goes beyond that, reshaping nurses’ role, strengthening patient safety and providing real-time insights that improve care. Many did say the most immediate opportunity lies in easing the documentation burden. Jason Atkins, RN, chief clinical informatics officer at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, pointed to ambient listening, chart summarization and care plan automation as tools that can free nurses from clicks in the EHR. These tools allow nurses to spend more time “caring out loud” with patients instead of navigating screens, he said. 

20-year-old twins reinvent a high plains farm after loss 
Successful Farming; by Lisa Foust Prater; 9/6/25 
... Kit Carson is a community of around 250 people in the High Plains of eastern Colorado. “There were nine kids in our graduating class, and we were two of them,” Alex said.  Just after senior year started, in September 2022, the brothers lost their mother, Maria, to cancer. Then, in January, they lost their father, Ervin, to the same disease. Ervin had been in the hospital since summer. When Maria’s cancer progressed, the couple was moved into hospice together, about 20 minutes from home. ... [Through their bereavement,] ... Alex and Paul made a decision: they were going to keep the farm going, and they were going to do it together. And although they learned countless lessons about farming from their father, they agreed they weren’t going to just keep doing things because that’s the way they had always been done. 

From panic to purpose: Tulane student’s bell project brings hope to cancer patients nationwide 
CBS WWL-4, New Orleans, LA; by Meg Farris; 9/8/25 
A little girl whose mother was diagnosed with a very serious illness could have never dreamed that several years later, she'd be helping patients across the country and beyond. ... Belle Spar vividly remembers, ... “I had a panic attack, hysterically crying. I thought I was going to lose my mom. I was 12. I was terrified ...” Belle Spar, 21. [The ritual of ringing the bell at the end of cancer treatment became a symbol of hope.] That 12-year-old ... is now a senior at Tulane University. During those nine years as an adolescent, she and her sister, Alexa, accomplished something remarkable. They have raised money to donate 130 bells, so far, to radiation and transplant centers around the U.S., and even in South America.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. ~ Harry S. Truman