Literature Review

BHS partners with local libraries to explore personal choices and palliative care iBerkshires.com, Great Barrington, MA; 10/28/26 Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) will partner with local libraries to launch a community conversation on palliative care, centered on book discussions of Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Written by a practicing surgeon, the bestseller bridges clinical care and lived experience, making it accessible to readers with no medical background, while resonating with the palliative care team leading the conversations. This community-based reading event is being offered as part of BHS's new Palliative Care program, a pilot initiative designed to expand this care across the Berkshires through widespread provider education, community awareness, and clinical expertise.

Translating evidence into practice: implementing caregiver burden assessments in palliative care clinic American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Care; by Nasreen Bagwan Malik, Sherief Ghozy, Kitty Fan, Cheryl Green, Denise Mohess; 10/13/26 Background: Caregiver burden assessments lack clinical uniformity in palliative care. Existing evidence-based interventions often impose resource demands that are prohibitive for smaller programs. Objectives: (1) Demonstrate the practical utility of routine caregiver screening paired with an interdisciplinary team (IDT) response protocol. (2) Identify patient and caregiver factors influencing burden. Conclusion: This workflow provides a replicable roadmap to transition caregivers from “invisible patients” to actively supported extensions of the care unit, reinforcing dyadic assessments as standard practice in outpatient palliative medicine.

Free webinar for physicians and healthcare professionals: Reducing hospital readmissions and reducing Hospital Readmissions and Length of stay in advanced illness patients VITAS Healthcare; Press Release; 9/14/26

ChristianaCare palliative care founder blasts outsourcingDelawareOnline; by Sophia Voight; 10/23/26 ChristianaCare is discontinuing its in-house palliative care services, choosing to outsource the services to its hospice partner AccentCare. "We want to be clear that ChristianaCare is not stepping away from palliative care," ChristianaCare’s Chief Physician Executive Kert Anzilotti said in a statement to Delaware Online/The News Journal. "The delivery model is changing, but palliative care will continue to be an important part of our approach to high-quality, patient-centered care." But the retired physician who founded ChristianaCare’s palliative care services warns that outsourcing them could hurt patients and diminish the quality of care.

Current challenges and future innovation in rural heart failure care: A qualitative analysisJournal of Cardiovascular Nursing; by Alexander A. Walkon, Shoshana H. Bardach, Aricca D. Van Citters, Tamar Mosulishvili, Samuel L. Youkilis, Amanda N. Perry, Megan M. Holthoff, Olawale O. Akinola, Amelia M. Cullinan, Melissa Borrows, Katharine A. Manning; 9/26Individuals living with heart failure experience challenges managing frequent hospital admissions and life-altering symptoms, including dyspnea, fatigue, and depression. These challenges are exacerbated by the unique obstacles associated with receiving healthcare in a rural community. Their care partners often do not receive sufficient support to care for someone with heart failure and experience fatigue, social isolation, and anxiety. Interviewees reported challenges related to symptom and care partner burden, fragmented healthcare communication, limited institutional support, and an unclear role for palliative care. Interviewees suggested that integrating personalized care strategies, improving communication and coordination, and expanding specialized support may help address these challenges.

Psycho-oncology and palliative care: treating the person, not just the tumor CancerNetwork; by Daniel C. McFarland, DO and Ramy Sedhom, MD; 10/19/26 In this episode of Oncology On the Go, Daniel C. McFarland, DO, spoke with Ramy Sedhom, MD, about how to build a cancer practice where symptom management and emotional support are part of routine oncology care rather than an outside referral. ... McFarland emphasized that therapeutic presence and the ongoing patient-clinician relationship are healing, even though they are difficult to measure or reimburse. He described the use of shared medical visits in his practice and the value of weekly team meetings that include therapists, chaplains, and other staff.  

Best case/worst case: A multisite randomized trial of scenario planning for patients with late-stage kidney diseaseJournal of American Geriatrics Society; by Lily N. Stalter, Bret M. Hanlon, Kyle J. Bushaw, Jenna Nitkowski, Anne Buffington, Katharine L. Cheung, Amy B. Zelenski, Kristine Kwekkeboom, Amar D. Bansal, Deidra Candice Crews, Holly M. Koncicki, Daniel Lam, Alvin H. Moss, Maya K. Rao, Dawn Felicity Wolfgram, Jeniann Yi, Carrie Brill, Tamara Isakova, Margaret L. Schwarze; 9/26Best Case/Worst Case (BC/WC) is a communication tool to support nephrologists and older adults with advanced chronic kidney disease with decisions about dialysis. We compared the effectiveness of training nephrologists to use BC/WC versus usual care on receipt of palliative care, quality of life (QOL), quality of communication, dialysis initiation, and death. While we hypothesized that improving prognostic awareness and communication would increase palliative care utilization, the challenges of connecting patients with life-limiting kidney disease to palliative care are multifaceted, well documented, and likely not surmountable with a communication intervention alone. Conclusion: Training nephrologists to use the BC/WC communication tool does not significantly affect receipt of palliative care or other measurable clinical outcomes.

Where can Americans access palliative care? New national initiative aims to find outGlobe Newswire; by Elizabeth Dowling; 10/14/26Where can people living with serious illness access specialty palliative care in the United States, and where is that care still out of reach? Today, there is no comprehensive national source showing where specialty palliative care is available across both hospital and community settings. The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is working to change that with the launch of the Palliative Care Program Inventory (Program Inventory), a national initiative to map where specialty palliative care programs operate and where gaps in access remain. The Program Inventory will collect information directly from specialty palliative care programs nationwide, including data on staffing, patient volume, and care delivery models. The resulting data will support research, policy, and advocacy efforts to better understand - and ultimately expand - access to specialty palliative care across the country.

Top ten tips palliative care clinicians should know about caring for people with interstitial lung diseasesJournal of Palliative Medicine; by Jyothsna Kuriakose, Jacopo D'Andria Ursoleo, Barney Isaac, Balamugesh Thangakunam, Donald R Sullivan, Kathleen Lindell, Anne-Marie Russell, Rachel Hadler, Matthew Maddocks, Natalia Smirnova, Russell Portenoy, M R Rajagopal, Sarah Mohammed, Anand S Iyer, Smriti Rana, Natasha Smallwood, Christopher A Jones, Jenifer Jeba Sundararaj; 9/26Interstitial lung diseases (ILD) represent a heterogenous group of illnesses with significant multidimensional suffering and varied prognoses. The complex care needs of people with ILD and their caregivers are underrecognized and incompletely addressed. This gap necessitates shared care by a multidisciplinary team along the illness trajectory. PC [palliative care] clinicians need to understand the illness patterns, prognoses, therapeutic options including lung transplant, symptom management, and other supportive interventions in ILD care. This article distills the current evidence into 10 practical tips to assist PC clinicians in delivering comprehensive care to people with ILD. Well-informed PC teams can significantly influence the illness experience of individuals with ILD and their caregivers, thereby reducing serious health-related suffering.

Free webinar for physicians and healthcare professionals: Reducing hospital readmissions and reducing Hospital Readmissions and Length of stay in advanced illness patients VITAS Healthcare; Press Release; 9/14/26

The future of palliative care: who will lead, who will pay, and what comes next? | part one Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); podcast hosted by Chris Comeaux with Brynn Bowman; 9/30/26 Palliative care isn’t struggling to prove that it works.  The bigger question now is whether our healthcare system can figure out how to deliver it to everyone who needs it—and sustainably pay for it. In Part One, Chris Comeaux sits down with Brynn Bowman, CEO of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), for a candid look at where palliative care is headed next.  Brynn paints a compelling picture of what success could look like five years from now: a patient living in rural America should have access to high-quality palliative care just as reliably as someone living near a major health system.

A pilot feasibility study of PAL-CHW-PDAC, a digitally enhanced community health worker-led intervention to facilitate stepped palliative care in patients with pancreatic cancerJournal of Palliative Medicine; by Nikhil R Thiruvengadam, Maud Celestin-Joachim, Lizbeth Rivas, Nishita Matangi, Arman Bahmani, Matthew Oroso, Joel Brothers, Kendrick Che, Andrew Chang, Emmanuel Eguia, Paul Leonor, Gina Mohr, Raja Narayan, Sagar Pathak, Susanne Montgomery, Betty Ferrell; 9/26Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is associated with substantial morbidity and poor quality of life (QOL). Early palliative care (EPC) has been shown to improve QoL and reduce symptom burden in PDAC, but only a minority of PDAC patients receive it. Using three conceptual models, we developed a community health worker (CHW)-led intervention to help facilitate stepped PC. Ninety-four percent of patients strongly agreed that the intervention was acceptable. Themed common responses highlighted by patients centered around the critically important role of the CHW in their care, especially as symptoms worsened. Patients' physical QoL and symptom burden improved from baseline to 12 weeks, while 83% of patients completed their ACP [advance care planning].