Literature Review

Nursing homes ‘can’t escape’ need for increased palliative care access: researchersMcKnights Long-Term Care News; by Josh Henreckson; 7/17/24 Nursing home residents could greatly benefit from expanded access to palliative care, but providers need more access to standardized tools, staff education and relationships with clinicians to make informed decisions about care, specialists say. ... Several key “themes” could be the foundation for a more formalized method of identifying palliative care needs for nursing home patients, researchers found. They included factors such as patients with uncontrolled symptoms and otherwise serious illnesses, as well as patients with indicators of significant decline such as frequent rehospitalizations. 

Factors affecting palliative care collaboration with pain medicine specialists Hematology Advisor; by James Maitlall, MD; 7/22/24 Structured collaboration between physicians working in palliative care (PC) and pain medicine (PM) may increase PC physician referral of seriously ill patients to PM specialists and potentially optimize their care, according to study results published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. ... The investigators concluded, “Although we found that PC physicians have highly positive attitudes about the value of PM specialists, referral rates remain low, even for IDDS implantation, which has perhaps the largest body of evidence for patients with complex cancer-associated pain.” They added, “Facilitating professional collaboration via joint educational/clinical sessions is one possible solution to drive ongoing interprofessional care in patients with complex pain.

Local whistleblowers help in federal hospice investigation CBS WKBN-27, Austintown, OH; by Patty Coller; 7/22/24 The parent company that operates a hospice provider in Austintown has agreed to a settlement in a federal lawsuit alleging that the local location, along with others in the southern part of the country, defrauded the government, according to federal prosecutors. Gentiva, formerly known as Kindred at Home, has agreed to pay $19 million to resolve allegations that it and other entities of Gentiva knowingly submitted, or caused to be submitted, false claims for hospice services provided to patients who were ineligible for hospice benefits under Medicare and other federal health care programs because the patients were not terminally ill, according to Department of Justice. ... The Employment Law Group said in a news release that there were 20 whistleblowers in the case, including two from the Youngstown area involving SouthernCare, who helped to recover about $2.13 million in alleged fraudulent billing.

Guest column: Private equity poses threat to home health care The Gardner News; by Jane Pike-Benton. Worcester Telegram & Gazette; 7/21/24 Health care observers across the commonwealth are focusing their attention on a bankruptcy court in Houston to learn the fate of eight Massachusetts hospitals being sold at auction by Steward Health Care. Steward’s financial collapse has unsurprisingly brought scrutiny on private equity in care delivery to a crescendo. ...  Nationally, the number of hospice agencies owned by private equity nearly quadrupled from 2011 to 2019. Seventy-two percent of those acquired hospices were previously nonprofits. As policymakers work to stabilize a health care capacity crisis pushed to the brink by Steward, they cannot afford to lose sight of home health and hospice providers in the shuffle. Organizations like ours, many of which were founded with nonprofit missions well over a century ago, are essential to hospitals desperately looking to discharge patients.

Navigating legal and ethical issues: Nurses’ role in accessing and using the Death Master File Daily Nurse; by Maya Payne; 7/22/24 Nurses have a great deal of responsibility when managing sensitive information, including access to the Death Master File (DMF), because they are healthcare professionals entrusted with patient care. This article explores the moral and legal issues that help nurses use the DMF in their practice in a morally responsible manner. ... Explore this detailed resource on DMF guidelines for further insights into responsibly using the Death Master File in healthcare settings. Editor's Note: About 10 years ago, the Social Security Office declared me as "dead." Yes. This affected everything financial and legal in my life. My husband even received standardized condolences from businesses with his name as my key contact. Clean up? A mess. Cause? The best that the Social Security Office could discern was that someone, somewhere entered a clerical mistake. I will never know. The effects of how this Death Master File is used--legally, ethically, and otherwise--cannot be understated.

I though my love for climbing died with my husband. I was wrong. Climbing; by Olivia Jordan Cornelius; 7/18/24 What do you do with someone’s climbing shoes when they die? I hadn’t thought about it. After all, my husband, Cam, was 34 and still should have had many years of climbing ahead of him. ... On the shoe rack, they sat as a reminder of the future I had imagined we’d have. Too intimate to give away and too painful to keep, I wrapped them in newspaper and put them in the garbage outside. Then I came back to our apartment and hid my pair in the hallway cupboard. ... Our once-adventurous life together ended in a stuffy hospice room. ... [Click on the title's link for this powerful story of navigating young widowhood.]

Screening for Dementia: A Podcast with Anna Chodos, Joseph Gaugler and Soo BorsonGeriPal Podcast; Eric Widera, Alex Smith, Anna Chodos, Joseph Gaugler, Soo Borson; 7/19/24The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concluded back in 2000 that there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against routine screening for dementia in older adults. Are there, though, populations that it may be helpful in, or should that change with the advent of the new amyloid antibodies?  Should it?  If so, how do we screen and who do we screen? On this week’s podcast we talk with three experts in the field about screening for dementia. 

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort. ~ Jesse Owens, 1936 American track and field athlete and nine-time gold medalist Editor's Note: As Olympians gather from all over the world for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, we celebrate the "determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort" of each athlete! 

Texas pharmaceutical marketer sentenced for $59 million medications fraud conspiracy ArentFox Schiff; by  D. Jacques Smith, Randall A. Brater, Michael F. Dearington, Nadia Patel, Hillary M. Stemple, Mattie Bowden, Elizabeth Satarov; 7/19/24 On July 12, Quintan Cockerell, a Texas pharmaceutical marketer, was sentenced to over two years in prison and ordered to pay more than $59 million for receiving illegal kickbacks in exchange for prescription referrals for compounded medications intended to be made specific for individual patient needs. ... Court documents and evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Cockerell used preloaded prescription pads and “standing orders” for doctors to easily select expensive compounded medications. The pharmacy could then switch ingredients in the medications actually prescribed by doctors to maximum insurance reimbursements.

Keys to negotiating ACO palliative care contracts Hospice News; by Molly Bookner; 7/22/24 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are key for scaling palliative care through value-based models. Hospices and palliative care providers can collaborate with ACOs by becoming members of those organizations themselves, or by contracting with them through a preferred provider network. These arrangements allow for the negotiation of mutually beneficial terms that are tailored to the needs and characteristics of patient populations. However, successfully negotiating such contracts requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of ACOs’ priorities. As the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) moves to align all Medicare beneficiaries with an accountable care relationship, these negotiations will become even more paramount.

What does "palliative care" represent in research using secondary data? Journal of Pain and Symptom Management; by J. Brian Cassel; 7/18/24 While much research has been done regarding "palliative care" using retrospective cohort studies of large datasets, the data sources may not be capturing specialty palliative care services. This article aims to clarify what source data are used in such studies, how specialty palliative care services are determined to have been provided or not, and mismatches between the nature of the data and the interpretation of researchers. 

How well does Medicare cover end-of-life care? It depends on what type Medical Xpress; by Mark Harden, CU Anschutz Medical Campus; 7/19/24 Not all versions of Medicare are created equal—and when it comes to end-of-life care, some versions may serve a patient's needs better than others. That's the focus of newly published research by Lauren Hersch Nicholas, Ph.D., MPP, a University of Colorado Department of Medicine and CU Cancer Center health economist, and her colleagues. The researchers analyzed the experiences of more than a million people receiving Medicare-funded services in the last six months of their lives. ... Their paper was published July 19 in JAMA Health Forum. What Nicholas and her colleagues found is that the kind of Medicare a patient is enrolled in can make a difference in whether that patient gets certain treatments, and whether the patient dies in a hospital or in hospice care.