Literature Review

Dignity shouldn’t depend on having an address: Holly Klein The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH; by guest columnist Holly Klein; 7/5/26 As a hospice nurse for more than 25 years, I’ve cared for people surrounded by family -- and I’ve cared for people who had no one. Today, as executive director and co-founder of Grace House Akron, I care for people who are experiencing homelessness, abandonment or extreme social isolation at the end of life. We provide a home and hospice care at no cost because we believe one simple truth: No one should die alone. I've cared for people living in motels, sleeping in shelters, staying in abandoned buildings or moving from one temporary place to another while facing a terminal illness. ... Hospice is not a place -- it's a model of care. But our healthcare system assumes everyone has somewhere safe to receive it. Many people don't.

Guardianship and hospice care fail dying patients MedPage Today's KevinMD.com; by Kirsten Engel, MD & Madha Tripathi; 6/3/26 “Mr. L” is alone, lying flat on his back in a slightly inclined bed, eyes squeezed shut, hands raised in the air as immobile fists. He has not spoken in weeks. ... The medical team calls it catatonia, a severe psychiatric syndrome that has rendered him mute, immobile, and medically fragile. The psychiatric care team has recommended comfort measures, and our hospice team is ready to accept him. ... Mr. L cannot access hospice because an overworked stranger appointed by the court has not yet returned the hospital’s calls. This is a guardian, a professional fiduciary who has never met Mr. L, who must sign the papers first. So we wait for the court to hold a hearing to approve the order. And Mr. L, still, silent, and suffering, waits with us.

Indiana's Saint Anne eldercare campus opens hospice suites to provide holistic end-of-life care Catholic Health World; by Julie Minda; 6/30/16 Saint Anne Communities, an eldercare campus in northeast Indiana, has opened a five-suite wing that offers people at the end of life holistic care and services. In the Saint Joseph Hospice Suites, staff provide medical, spiritual and emotional care to residents as well as support to their loved ones. Facility leaders said Saint Anne designed the suites to have a homelike feel. They said a key priority is to surround the residents and their loved ones with prayer, comfort and dignity.

Advance Care Planning documentation completeness and end-of-life care: trends and associations using HRS 2010-2022 data American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine; by Zhigang Xie, PhD, MPA, Jiaming Liang, PhD, and Molly Jacobs, PhD, MS; 6/16/26 Objectives: This study examined additive associations between comprehensive advance care planning (ACP) documentation and end-of-life care (EOL) outcomes among older adults in the United States. ...Results: About 42.7% decedents had two documents and 28.9% had none, documentation increased substantially around 2014. ... Associations were stronger among decedents with expected death and attenuated among those with unexpected death.

My parents moved in with us before my dad got sick. It made all the difference when he passed. Business Insider; by Justin Murphy; 6/27/26

Mission Healthcare expands in Oregon, California Hospice News; by Jim Parker; 6/26/26 Mission Healthcare has cut the ribbon on three de novo locations in Oregon and California. The three new operations are located in Bakersfield, California; Salem, Oregon and Portland, Oregon. All three opened within the past week, expanding the company’s footprint in the western United States. 

Pediatric home-based hospice and palliative care: A scoping reviewBMC Palliative Care; by Ellen Davis, Daniel H Grossoehme, Toluwalase Ajayi, Justin N Baker, Pamela S Hinds, Lisa Humphrey, Jill Ann Jarrell, Rachel Thienprayoon, Sarah Friebert; 5/26Pediatric palliative and/or hospice care is provided across a broad spectrum of settings, ranging from inpatient to outpatient to a child's home. Pediatric home-based hospice and/or palliative care teams offer a specialized, interdisciplinary approach to care, allowing children to stay in the home while offering comprehensive support. Common themes emerged [in this review] including studies analyzing models of care, characterizing the population, end-of-life decision making, clinical outcomes of home-based hospice and/or palliative care, costs and economic impact, family experiences, quality domains, specific treatment modalities, and the use of telehealth. Overall, the available literature supported home-based hospice and/or palliative care as an effective model of care, reducing the burden on families, improving quality of life, and allowing families to stay in their preferred setting for care without sacrificing clinical outcomes.

“Nobody told us”: Inequities in end-of-life dementia careJournal of Pain & Symptom Management; by Krista L. Harrison, Lingsheng Li, Jasmine Santoyo-Olsson, Niousha Moini, Lauren J. Hunt, Rebecca L. Sudore, Alex Smith; 6/26In the United States, one in three older adults dies with or from dementia. Despite increasing hospice enrollment, minoritized racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ communities face persistent inequities in access to timely, high-quality end-of-life care. We recruited bereaved caregivers of decedents with dementia from communities that experience health disparities. Just over half of the participants rated end-of-life care middling-to-bad. Reasons cited for receiving poorer care than others were age (40%), race, ethnicity, or nationality (36%), disability (20%), and weight (8%). End-of-life communication challenges reported by participants were often based in systemic racism and structural oppression, including: problems accessing language-concordant education and clinicians, missed opportunities for anticipatory guidance due to cultural biases or lack of access to healthcare, difficulty finding clinicians skilled in sensitive and tailored communication, inconsistent hospice admission criteria, and understaffed hospices.

Somerset hospice opening delayed by Medicare move The Tribune-Democrat, Somerset, PA; by Kelly Urban; 6/20/26 Following a ribbon-cutting in May for the reopening of the Somerset inpatient hospice facility, Windber Hospice at Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center at Windber has provided an update regarding the facility’s opening timeline. While the facility remains on track to reopen, the opening has been delayed by a recently announced nationwide Medicare enrollment moratorium affecting new hospice enrollments and hospice locations. ... “We know many families have been eagerly anticipating the return of inpatient hospice care in Somerset County, and we share their disappointment in this unexpected delay,” said Richard Sukenik, CEO of Chan Soon-Shiong Medical Center at Windber. “We are actively working with local, state and federal legislators to seek assistance and ensure they understand the importance of bringing this service back to Somerset County. We will continue pursuing every available avenue to move this project forward while preparing to welcome patients as soon as approval is granted.” [Access to the full article may be limited by a paywall.]

Cracks in the AI crystal ball: why clinical prediction tools fall short in the real world Journal of General Internal Medicine; by David Gamble MD, Andrew Wong MD, MS and Amiran Baduashvili, MD; 6/22/26 ... In this issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Patel and colleagues evaluate the real-world performance of five Epic predictive AI tools: the Deterioration Index, Sepsis Model, Unplanned Readmission Model, End-of-Life Care Index, and Patient No-Show Model. Their systematic review and meta-analysis, encompassing 22 studies and over two million patients, focused on the models’ ability to distinguish between patients who ultimately did and did not experience a specific outcome—a property known as discrimination.

Groundbreaking ceremony held for Julia HouseWJET Erie, Erie, PA; by Bailey Mutschler; 6/18/26 What started as moving dirt on Thursday [6/18] is expected to become a place focused on comfort, dignity and support for families that need it. Project leaders broke ground off of West Road in McKean, officially beginning construction of Julia House, Erie County's first free standing in-patient hospice facility and outpatient palliative medicine clinic. "I saw the very first inpatient hospice facility in Cleveland, and I realized that we didn't have a facility like this here in Erie County," said Christopher Strzalka, the medical director and board president of Julia Hospice & Palliative Care. ... This project has been in the works since the pandemic. After receiving multiple state grants and holding a number of fundraisers, their goal of nearly $6 million has been reached.

Indian Health Service receives gift membership to expand training for serious illness care U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | Indian Health Service | The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives; Press Release; 6/16/26 The Indian Health Service (IHS) has received a two-year membership to the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) through a grant-funded initiative, expanding access to training and resources that support care for patients with serious illness. Through this gifted membership, targeted IHS workforce development participants, including Models of Care initiatives and clinical training programs, will gain access to CAPC’s comprehensive library of web-based courses, tools, webinars, and expert support.