Literature Review

Green Bay Packers Foundation awards $1.75 million in grants [$125k to Agrace Hospice Care Foundation] Philanthropy News Digest; 6/29/24 The Green Bay Packers Foundation has announced 10 grants totaling $1.75 million to support organizations serving Wisconsin’s Brown, Dane, and Milwaukee counties. Recipients include ... ; Agrace Hospice Care Foundation, which will receive $125,000 to expand dementia and Alzheimer’s services throughout Wisconsin; ... “The Packers Foundation is pleased to award a record amount in impact grants to 10 organizations doing critically important work in their communities,” said Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy. “From education, mentoring, and community building programs to providing care and support for our most vulnerable neighbors, the grant recipients will create direct and lasting impacts throughout the state of Wisconsin.”

 Recognized for seven consecutive years as a Great Place to Work® Cision PRWeb; by Chapters Health System, Temple Terrace, FL; 6/18/24 Chapters Health System is proud to announce its certification for the seventh consecutive year as a Great Place to Work® in the Aging Services category by the independent analysts at the Great Place to Work® Institute. ... "We are incredibly grateful to our team members for their invaluable feedback, which enabled us to achieve this milestone for seven consecutive years," said Andrew Molosky, MBA, FACHE, president and chief executive officer for Chapters Health. "Their commitment and dedication are the cornerstones of our success, and it is their insights that help us continuously improve our work environment and culture." Team member feedback helps benchmark our progress as we continue to focus on engagement and move input into action." ... In 2024, 76 percent of team members said Chapters Health is a great place to work compared to 57 percent of employees at a typical U.S.-based company.

Monroe Clinic & Hospital Foundation celebrates record-breaking mini golf event The Monroe Times, Monroe, WI; 6/30/24 The Monroe Clinic & Hospital Foundation’s “Little Golf” and Grill event, held on June 11, was an afternoon of mini golf that led into a night full of generous giving for a great cause. ... The event raised a record-breaking more than $79,600 from countless heartfelt donations provided by community members and businesses. This brought the total raised over the event’s 32 years to over $1,005,000. “Three decades of commitment from our healthcare team and the community to support and grow local hospice care is an incredible achievement,” shared Jane Sybers, Executive Director of Monroe Clinic & Hospital Foundation, a member of SSM Health. “I have the privilege to share gratitude stories with donors whose loved ones walked through hospice with us. To surpass one-million-dollars is such an incredible milestone and shows how much our community values this meaningful service.” The evening program walked attendees through the hospice patient journey. During the program, different staff members shared their role in patient care and the impact their patients have on them. 

May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right. - Peter Marshall

Swiss couple walk 1,000 miles to Perranporth in Cornwall to support children's hospices Voice; by Andrew Townsend; 6/29/24 A couple have walked 1,000 miles from Switzerland to Cornwall to raise money for children’s hospices. Retired Swiss professor Rainer Zust, 65, and his partner Stephanie, and their two dogs Leo and Nettie covered the distance in 69 days, finishing the trek in Perranporth. Whilst walking in the UK, the couple raised around £1,000 for Children’s Hospice South West (CHSW). And while in Cornwall they visited the Little Harbour Children’s Hospice at St Austell.  

Palliative care nurses see us in our final hours — these are the life lessons they've learnt ABC News; by Iskhandar Razak; 6/29/24 Anne Myers was once confused and shaken by death. After more than a decade as a nurse, including in hospital ICUs, her mother died. "I'd seen a lot of deaths in my nursing life, but it was the closest human to me that had died," she said. "It kind of sent me down a 'oh my god, I don't know what's happening to me', this grief I'm experiencing." Soon afterwards, she became a palliative care nurse. "I ended up just going down the path of 'what is death, what is death and dying all about?'" she recalled. More than 15 years later, here's what she and other palliative care nurses have discovered on how to die well and live well.

Harn Art Museum encourages woman with Alzheimer’s to move again ABC TV WCJB-20; Gainesville, FL; by Kayla Lewis; 6/28/24 Pat Mclaurin’s Alzheimer’s has progressed since her daughter, Diana Dodds took her on a bucket list trip in 2022. ... “So my mom would never use a walker or a cane. She would be more likely to try to hit me with it then use it, so she’s fiercely independent, yet she knows right now she cannot really walk without falling,” Dodds shared. “She’s always grabbing for walls just in the house.” ... Pat used to walk 3-5 miles a day, but in January slowed down. They decided to test out their own walker on a trip to the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, but her mom didn’t like it. However, the museum offers walkers and Pat loved them. Diana tells her it’s like a shopping cart. “Four wheels, it has higher bars, it had brakes on it. It felt more like a shopping cart because of the seat,” Dodds shared. Diana described the walker they gave her mother to Haven Hospice officials who then brought her mom a walker just like it a couple days later. “It’s inspiring because I’ve seen her push through every step trying to keep moving, and I want her to be able to keep moving,” said Dodds. 

Why nurses are protesting AIHealthcare Brew; by Tom McKay; 6/26/24Continuous data collection and analysis is hardly a replacement for knowledge, nursing unions say, and sometimes gets in the way of care. The largest nursing union in the US, National Nurses United (NNU), is sounding the alarm about the use of AI in healthcare. In April, the union’s affiliate California Nurses Association (CNA) protested an AI conference helmed by managed care consortium Kaiser Permanente. Like workers in other sectors who are worried about AI encroachment, the nurses fear that the tech is contributing to the devaluation of their skills amid what they say is already a “chronic” understaffing crisis, nurses reported in an NNU survey of 2,300 registered nurses and members in early 2024. But the NNU, which represents approximately 225,000 nurses across the country, also claims healthcare operators are using AI hype as a pretext to rush half-baked and potentially harmful technologies into service, says Michelle Mahon, NNU’s assistant director of nursing practice.

Lawmakers say CMS should ban Medicare Advantage’s use of AI to deny care McKnights Long-Term Care News; by Josh Henreckson; 6/26/24 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should consider banning artificial intelligence from being used to deny Medicare Advantage coverage pending a “systematic review,” a group of 49 congressional leaders is urging. ...  Skilled nursing providers have been sounding the alarm for years on Medicare Advantage coverage access, especially when informed by AI and other algorithms. Sector leaders have frequently noted that these methods can deny or prematurely end coverage for patients who need it to afford necessary long-term care. Providers and consumer advocates both spoke out in favor of the lawmakers’ letter this week. “LeadingAge’s nonprofit and mission driven members … have firsthand experience of Medicare Advantage (MA) plans’ inappropriate use of prior authorization to deny, shorten and limit MA enrollees’ access to medically necessary Medicare benefits,” wrote Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge. ... “Implementation by [the] Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which we fully support, would ensure MA plans fulfill their obligation to provide enrollees equitable access to Medicare services.”

A little help from your friends... Jennifer Hale, MSN, RN, CHPN, CPHQA little help from your friends is a memorial fund set up for Jennifer Hale's family. If interested, you can read more about it and donate here. Donations accepted 6/30/24 - 7/15/24. ... We recently announced Jennifer Hale unexpectedly died Friday, 6/21/24. Vice President of Quality and Standards at Compassus, former Vice President Clinical Services at Optum Palliative Care and Hospice, and former Executive Director of the Georgia Hospice & Palliative Care Organization, Jennifer was widely known, respected, and loved in the hospice community. We share our condolences with her family, friends, and colleagues. Her obituary is posted here.

NPHI Statement: Hospital notifications to patients of hospice referral optionsNPHI press release; 6/17/24Many hospitals are providing discharged patients with a list of all Medicare-certified hospices in the geographic area in which the patient resides, in the mistaken belief that this is a requirement under the Medicare Conditions of Participation (COPs). Hospitals may be understandably confused by existing hospital CoPs that require such lists to be provided for HH, SNF, IRF and LTCHs. Section 482.43(c)(2) clearly states these provider types and excludes hospices. There is no such requirement in the hospice regulations or law that requires a hospital to provide patients with a list of all hospices in a particular geographic area. [See statement for additional information.]

Families, volunteers share stories of finding peace through hospice Salina Post; by Cristina Janney, Hays Post; 6/29/24 This is a two-part series on hospice care in northwest Kansas. Dalene Juenemann and her father, Dean, had to make the difficult decision to enter hospice care after he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. “He was just such a social guy and someone was in a couple times a week,” she said. “They were checking in on him and it was that security blanket he had.” ... He didn’t want to go through aggressive chemo and he didn’t qualify for a bladder removal because of his age. “He chose quality of life,” she said. "It was that final decision that we are done with everyone wanting a piece of me. I'm just going to enjoy life," she said. Dalene's father, Dean Shearer, was a patient of NWKareS, Hospice of Northwest Kansas, which serves 16 counties from Interstate 70 to the Nebraska border and Trego County to the Colorado border. ... She said the extra care hospice offered allowed her to just be a daughter to her father as he was dying. [Click on the title's link to continue reading stories from families and volunteers at NWKAreS.]

NAHC re-files lawsuit against HHS, CMS over home health cuts Home Health Care News; by Joyce Famakinwa; 6/28/24 The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) hasn’t given up on efforts to push back on Medicare home health payment calculations. NAHC has re-filled its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The lawsuit focuses on the home health PDGM budget neutrality adjustment, which imposed both permanent and temporary calculations with a methodology that NAHC believes is noncompliant with the law. The original lawsuit was filed last summer, and in April the case was dismissed by a federal court in Washington D.C. The case was dismissed on the basis that NAHC did not fully exhaust administrative appeal remedies. ... There are a number of factors that made NAHC decide to re-file the lawsuit, according to [NAHC President, William A.] Dombi. “No. 1, it will be faster,” he said. “No. 2, we are highly likely to get the same judge, as there’s a related litigation standard in an assignment of cases,” he said. One of the biggest factors that heavily contributed to NAHC’s decision was the Supreme Court ruling, which upended the Chevron Doctrine.