Literature Review

Busted: The top fraud schemes of Q2 2025 Cotiviti; by Erin Rutzler; 9/25/25As we move through 2025, the pace of fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) schemes in healthcare show no signs of slowing. This past quarter brought cases involving unlicensed clinics, hospice kickbacks, insider deception, and prescription fraud totaling billions in false claims. Read our breakdown of 10 major healthcare FWA schemes from April through June 2025—and what they reveal about the evolving tactics of bad actors. ...

Shepherd’s Cove helps students cope with loss Messenger, Gadsden, AL; by Karla McArthur; 9/25/25 ... “When people think of Shepherd’s Cove, they think of a hospice facility, which is accurate but not the complete picture,” Smothers said. “They don’t necessarily connect the grief support with the hospice services.” The nonprofit’s hospice facility serves nine counties, but its in-school bereavement program currently reaches only four. Portions of Etowah County are included, allowing counselors to support students at several schools, including West End, Duck Springs, Highland, Sardis-area campuses and Attalla City schools. Smothers said the goal is to expand as more staff are added. A team of four social workers provides monthly counseling for students in grades K-12 who have experienced a loss. The loss does not have to be recent. “We operate under the precept that grief doesn’t have a timeline,” Smothers said. 

Best use of emerging tech in health systems from 50 leaders Becker's Hospital Review; by Scott King; 9/25/25 Emerging technologies have greatly improved efficiency at most health systems. Over 50 healthcare leaders spoke with Becker’s about their best uses of tech in the past year. ... As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is connecting with healthcare leaders who will speak at the event to get their perspectives on key issues in the industry. ... Question: What’s your system’s best use of tech in the past year, and why?

Hospice, palliative care services yield high quality, cost savings Hospice News; by Holly Vossel; 9/22/25 Hospice and palliative care services can result in better outcomes and reduced costs, recent research has found. A recent study by Empassion Health examined 45,957 seriously ill patients receiving supportive care through the organization from January 2023 to April 2025. The study found a 35% reduction in total cost of care per patient during the final year of life when compared to other individuals. ... The Empassion Health study’s key findings include:

Emotional analytics in HRtech: Measuring mood, motivation, and morale HRTechSeries; by HRTech Staff Writer; 9/22/25 ... What is emotional analytics in HR?... Emotional analytics is a new field in HRtech that combines psychology, data science, and organizational strategy. It gives HR a real-time view of how employees are feeling, unlike traditional surveys that only give a static picture. ... Emotional analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing information about how employees are feeling. This means figuring out mood patterns, stress levels, trust in leadership, and team or department morale. ... For instance, a quarterly survey might not show how worried the workers are right away after a big change in the organization. Real-time sentiment tracking, on the other hand, can let HR leaders know when stress levels are rising within days. This lets them offer proactive support like counseling sessions, open communication, or changes to workloads. ...

Study finds hospice providers “game” Medicare Payment Cap, but with modest impact on costs Penn LDI - Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; by Julia Hinkcley, JD; 9/16/25 ... Each year, about half of Medicare beneficiaries who die receive hospice services. A new study by LDI Senior Fellow and Director of Research Norma Coe and her colleague David Rosenkranz shows that some hospice agency decision-making may be intended to increase payments by undercutting the annual revenue cap that Medicare imposes. But this “gaming” of the payment rules creates only modest increases in both hospice enrollment and spending. The study’s findings also support MedPAC’s view that wage index-adjusting the cap could make it more equitable across hospice programs, but the authors caution that the MedPAC proposal to reduce the cap by 20 percent might lead some hospice providers to close, and therefore requires more analysis.

The Denver Hospice and Colorado Visiting Nurse Association announce Ben Marcantonio as new President The Denver Hospice; by CS Master Admin; 9/23/25 Tim Bowen, President and CEO of Care Synergy, along with The Denver Hospice and Colorado Visiting Nurse Association (CVNA) Boards of Directors, are pleased to announce that Ben Marcantonio has been selected as the new President of The Denver Hospice and Colorado Visiting Nurse Asssociation. Marcantonio brings more than 40 years of leadership experience in healthcare, education, and social service organizations. Most recently, he served as Chief Integration Officer for the National Alliance for Care at Home, where he was responsible for integrating operational processes, systems, and departments of two national associations into one unified organization. ... Earlier in his career, Marcantonio was President and CEO of Hospice of the Chesapeake in Maryland, where he successfully expanded access to care, increased financial stability, and strengthened community-based palliative care services. He also served in leadership positions at San Diego Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine, Scripps Health, and Charter Hospital, and began his career in educational leadership with the Diocese of San Diego.

Hospice Research Information 9/20/25

[Canada] Availability of respite care almost triples a palliative care patient’s chance of dying at home EurekAlert! - AAAS; News Release by McGill University; 9/22/25 Access to respite services for family caregivers increases a palliative care patient’s probability of dying at home almost threefold, according to a McGill University-led study. Previous surveys suggest most Canadians with a serious illness would prefer to spend the end of their lives at home. ... Funded by Quebec’s health ministry as part of its action plan for equitable access to quality palliative and end-of-life care, the study set out to find which factors matter most in helping patients avoid a transfer to a hospital or palliative care centre in their final days. Respite care – professional help that allows family caregivers to take short breaks –emerged as the strongest predictor, with patients 2.7 times more likely to die at home when it was available.

Social Media Watch 9/19/25

When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you. ~Shannon L. Alder

Outpatient pediatric palliative care: A national survey of clinic structures and operationsJournal of Pain and Symptom Management; by Ashley Kiefer Autrey, Caroline Stafford, Casie James, Suraj Sarvode Mothi, Elissa G. Miller, Alexis Morvant, Erica C. Kaye; 8/25Despite the rapid growth of pediatric palliative care (PPC) over the past two decades, outpatient pediatric palliative care (OPPC) remains an underdeveloped resource for children living with serious illness and their families. Characterizing the utilization of clinic models and workflow processes among OPPC programs is essential for establishing benchmarks to help improve OPPC operationalization and hospital-specific program development. This paper presents national data to address this gap, with the goal of supporting PPC programs in their efforts to expand service lines to meet the growing needs of patients with serious illness and medical complexity and their families.

The effect of the Care Ecosystem Collaborative Care Model on end-of-life outcomes for people with dementia and their caregiversAmerican Journal of Hospice & Palliative Care; by Lauren J Hunt, Krista L Harrison, Rachel Kiekhofer, Jennifer Merrilees, Alissa B Sideman, Sarah Dulaney, I Elaine Allen, Kirby Lee, Winston Chiong, Sarah M Hooper, Stephen J Bonasera, Tamara L Braley, Bruce L Miller, Katherine L Possin; 8/25Collaborative care models that feature care navigation have been found to have a range of benefit for people with dementia (PWD) and their caregivers, but their effect on end-of-life (EOL) outcomes has not been robustly evaluated. Our primary objective was to evaluate the effect of the Care Ecosystem-a telephone-based collaborative care model for dementia with care navigation-on EOL outcomes for PWD and their caregivers. Compared to Usual Care, Care Ecosystem caregivers had higher ratings of caregiver self-efficacy prior to PWD death ... but caregiver's satisfaction with EOL care did not differ between groups ... Qualitative analysis revealed Care Ecosystem provided helpful emotional and practical support, but participants wanted more anticipatory guidance, more information about hospice care and earlier referral, and better coordination with the healthcare team.