Literature Review

HCS home care/hospice salary & benefits studies underway American Health Care Association; by LIsa Hohenemser; 6/23/26 Hospital & Healthcare Compensation Service (HCS) has announced the 2026 Home Care and Hospice Salary & Benefits studies are now underway with the deadline of August 10th. The Reports are recognized as the authoritative source for comprehensive marketplace data for home health + hospice agencies. Last year’s Home Care Report contained data from 1,111 home health agencies. The Hospice Report had data from 1,091 hospice agencies. Both studies include questions on staffing issues, nursing turnover/vacancy rates, and sign-on bonuses used by agencies to attract new employees.  ... Directions to Participate in the HCS Home Care or Hospice Salary & Benefits Study: ...

Beyond the pilot trap: how healthcare can scale AI without losing trust MedCityNews; by Prashant Sareen; 6/18/26 The future of healthcare depends on enterprises moving decisively beyond the pilot trap by treating enterprise AI as a platform capable of sustaining hundreds of dynamic models. The question facing healthcare leaders today is no longer whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be transformative, but whether our organizations can transform quickly enough to harness it at an enterprise scale. The industry has moved past the initial excitement of proof-of-concept (POC) success, only to be confronted by a structural chasm: the Pilot Trap. 

Beyond the pilot trap: how healthcare can scale AI without losing trust MedCity News; by Prashant Sareen; 6/18/26 The question facing healthcare leaders today is no longer whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be transformative, but whether our organizations can transform quickly enough to harness it at an enterprise scale. The industry has moved past the initial excitement of proof-of-concept (POC) success, only to be confronted by a structural chasm: the Pilot Trap. This is the organizational inertia and technical friction that causes successful AI models, brilliant in isolation, to fail spectacularly in the messy reality of production. Now, with enterprises looking to adopt Agentic AI systems that are capable of autonomous reasoning, planning, and task execution—the pressure, and the risk, has multiplied. 

Celebrating the opening of the Hope Campus with community ribbon cutting Blue Ridge Care, Winchester, VA; by Blue Ridge Care Marketing; 6/12/26 A New Home for Care, Connection, and Support: Blue Ridge Care [formerly known as Blue Ridge Hospice] officially celebrated the opening of its Hope Campus on Thursday, June 11, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony held in partnership with the Top of Virginia Regional Chamber. ... One Campus, Many Ways to Care: The Hope Campus brings together several Blue Ridge Care programs in one place, including our Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) at Blue Ridge Independence at Home; our Community Grief Support Services at the Center for Hope & Healing; Volunteer Services; and our new Supportive Care Program.

When grief shows up at work. Inside America's heartbreaking crisis

Penn Medicine’s approach to clinical care AI tools focuses on problems they want to solve Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH); by Christopher Cheney; 6/12/26 Penn Medicine has embraced a range of AI tools in clinical care such as a new collaboration with K Health that includes AI tools to engage patients and tee up visits with clinicians. ... With so many AI tool options becoming available in clinical care, it is important for senior leaders to have a focused approach for AI tool adoption, according to Srinath Adusumalli, MD, vice president and chief health information officer at Penn Medicine. “At the highest level, when we adopt AI tools in clinical care, we focus on the problems we are trying to solve,” Adusumalli says. 

Stakeholder perspectives on integrating ADEPT into end-of-life care for nursing home residents with dementia: A qualitative descriptive studyInternational Journal of Older People Nursing; by Susanny J Beltran, Latarsha Chisholm, Emily Jaijairam; 5/26Nursing homes care for a significant proportion of individuals with advanced dementia, yet timely hospice referrals remain a challenge. The Advanced Dementia Prognostic Tool (ADEPT) is a mortality risk score instrument that holds promise for improving care planning by providing a standardised, accessible method for identifying residents at risk of death within 6 months. Current processes for identifying hospice-eligible residents rely on regular assessments and interdisciplinary collaboration but reveal significant gaps, including delays in referrals and inconsistent practices. Participants viewed ADEPT as a promising tool to complement goals-of-care conversations and enhance care planning, rather than exclusively triggering hospice initiation. Implementation barriers included the need for electronic system integration, regulatory compliance and staff education, while facilitators encompassed strong leadership support, interdisciplinary coordination and alignment with existing workflows.

Compassion fatigue and spiritual care competence amongst palliative care nurses: a moderated mediation model of care quality and job satisfaction Journal of Clinical Nursing / Early View; by Enise Sürücü, Funda Veren, Hülya Kulakçı Altıntaş, Büşra Baş, and Zeynep Acar Demir; 5/30/26 Impact:

Get ready to access the Hospice Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER)CMS Center for Program Integrity; 5/28/26 CPI is getting really close to releasing the Hospice Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER). The Hospice PEPPER will be available through the PEPPER Portal in early June 2026. To ensure hospice providers can successfully access their reports, we ask that you distribute the following instructions to your members.

The future of hospice: how HOPE will transform reimbursement & care | part one Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); podcast hosted by Chris Comeaux with Andrea Hale and Raianne Melton; 5/20/26 In this Part One episode of The Future of Hospice: How HOPE Will Transform Reimbursement & Care, healthcare leaders and hospice professionals, Andrea Hale, CEO of Valley Hospice and Raianne Melton, Director of Clinical Services of Professional Services for Axxess, explore how CMS hospice changes will impact hospice operations, compliance, documentation, and outcomes-based reimbursement models. We take a deep dive into one of the most significant changes facing hospice providers in decades—the implementation of the Hospice Outcomes & Patient Evaluation (HOPE) tool.  

Development of the revised CAHPS Hospice Survey Journal of Pain and Symptom Management; by Danielle Schlang, MA, Melissa A. Bradley, BA, and Rebecca Anhang Price, PhD; 5/18/26 ... Methods: We conducted a plain language review and environmental scan, refined existing survey instrument wording, drafted candidate survey items addressing new topics of interest, and conducted 7 rounds of cognitive interviews with a total of 59 family caregivers of hospice decedents. Results: Cognitive interview respondents consistently interpreted “respecting [the patient’s] wishes,” and “listening to the things that matter most” and found these concepts relevant to their family members’ hospice care experiences; in contrast, they found the phrases “cultural practices” and “choosing what to do next” confusing or unclear. ... Conclusion:  The revised CAHPS Hospice Survey simultaneously adds new topics prioritized by stakeholders and reduces survey complexity and length. Editor's Note: This journal article includes a downloadable "Journal Pre-proof" PDF. Its Appendix B (at pp. 27-33) provides a helpful table, "Comparison between Original and Revised CAHPS Hospice Survey Items, with Rationale."

Background on CMS’s anti-fraud efforts in hospice careAEI - The American Enterprise Institute; by James C. Capretta; 5/21/26 ... For broader context, Congress added hospice coverage to Medicare in the 1980s to provide lower-cost and more patient-centered settings for terminally ill beneficiaries. ... Like home health, the hospice benefit is vulnerable to abuse because the barriers to entering the market are lower than in more regulated settings. The capital investment to get started is minimal in comparison with building a new hospital, outpatient clinic, or nursing home. Further, the potential profit margins are high if a service provider is confident that the per diem is above what is needed to provide the required services.Although CMS’s focus on fraud in hospice care is warranted, stronger oversight by itself may not produce large program savings. In theory, more use of hospice care could lead to lower overall costs if the sponsoring agencies are competent and can help their patients avoid costly hospital or nursing home admissions. CMS’s investigations need to be subtle enough to weed out the bad actors without making it overly difficult for vulnerable patients to get the care they need in their own homes or in other low-cost community settings.

Home health & hospice M&A in 2026: how compliance and clinical risk affect valuation and deal structure JD Supra; by Arnall Golden Gregory, LLP; 5/15/26 Key Takeaways: