Literature Review

The Duke Endowment grant award supports first coordinated palliative care program in Robeson County The Robesonian, Lumberton, NC; by Amanda Crabtree; 7/15/26 UNC Health Southeastern was awarded $575,000 from The Duke Endowment to establish Robeson County’s first coordinated hospital-to-community palliative care program in partnership with Lower Cape Fear LifeCare. The investment represents a significant step forward in expanding access to compassionate, patient-centered care for an estimated 400 patients with serious illness while strengthening the healthcare continuum across Robeson County. By creating a seamless connection between hospital care and community-based services, the initiative will ensure that patients receive the right care, at the right time, in the setting that best meets their needs.

The corporatization of medicine, in salaries and beds MedPageToday's KevinMD.com; by Brian Hudes, MD; 7/11/26 In the 1970s, the American hospital was, in the industry’s own language, an “open workshop.” ... The doctor made the medical decisions; the administrator kept the lights on and the ledgers balanced. It was an arrangement with obvious flaws (fragmentation, duplication, uneven quality), but it rested on a clear premise: Medicine was practiced by physicians, and the institution existed to support that practice. That premise has quietly inverted. ... It is a corporation that employs them. The practice down the street has been acquired, rebranded, and folded into a system with a marketing department, a real-estate strategy, and a chief executive whose compensation would have been unimaginable to the physicians of the open-workshop era. The people who now set the direction of American medicine are, increasingly, not the people who see patients.

An end-of-life care approach defining a new standard of careJAMDA; by David N. Hoffman; 6/26The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Leadership Alliance established an End-of-Life Care/Ending-Life Care Accelerator to define a continuum of care for patients as they progress from curative care, to palliative care, to hospice care, to final care planning, including ending life care interventions such as Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and palliative sedation. This accelerator defined as its goal the task of breaking down barriers between care providers which has been illuminated by research recently conducted by the Completed Life Initiative (CLI). CLI’s research efforts in this area started with an ongoing examination of nationwide hospice organization policies to provide referral for active intervention at the end of life. That effort was refocused on the widespread noncompliance of California and Washington state hospice organizations with a state law requirement to post on the organizations website a list of interventions made available by the hospice organization.

The hidden cost of cancer's end: how financial strain shapes final months of care Fred Hutch Cancer Center, University of Washingon, Seattle, WA; by D. Moosavi; 6/25/26 ... Previous Fred Hutch research has shown that people with cancer are more than twice as likely to file for bankruptcy, and nearly twice as likely to experience what researchers call an “adverse financial event,” compared with people who don’t have cancer. But most of that earlier work focused on financial hardship as an outcome caused by cancer. This study flips the question: once someone is already dealing with financial strain, what happens to the care they receive as their illness progresses? 

Dying without a safety net MedCityNews; by Darren Schulte; 6/21/26 Recently, I reviewed the case of a woman with advanced metastatic breast cancer – we’ll call her Helen. ... As one therapy after another failed, Helen cycled in and out of the hospital: complications from treatment, complications from the cancer itself, and each time the system responded the only way it knew how – rapid escalation, ICU stays, more procedures, more drugs. Finally, a palliative care team was consulted during her last hospitalization. After long family meetings, Helen was discharged to hospice and died days later. Throughout that final year, Helen suffered. No one on her medical team had documented her wishes, preferences, or goals of care. No one had walked her through the trade-offs she faced with each treatment decision. The system did what it was designed to do, and it failed her completely. 

What to know about recent federal actions involving state Medicaid program integrity KFF; by Jessica Mathers and Elizabeth Hinton; 6/9/26 The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also taken nationwide and state-specific action in the Medicaid program, including:

How to transform a health system’s organizational culture and hardwire it for the futureNEJM Catalyst; by Brian Carlson, Nancy M. Lorenzi, Paul Sternberg, Jr., Cassandra Hennessy, Dandan Liu; 4/26Organizational culture is a critical driver of workforce and patient experience, yet health care institutions often struggle to sustain their desired culture over time. In 2017, Vanderbilt Health identified inconsistencies in expected workforce behaviors through patient feedback, prompting the creation of a strategic cultural renewal initiative. The resulting program, Defining Personalized Care, had a 4-year road map of seven e-learning modules designed to reinforce core values and improve interpersonal behaviors across the workforce. This single-center pre–post study revealed statistically significant improvements in patient experience scores, particularly in the communication and courtesy domains. The initiative demonstrated that engaging, relevant content combined with visible support from leadership can drive voluntary participation and generate measurable outcomes. This case study offers a replicable framework for health care organizations seeking to hardwire their cultural expectations and align workforce behaviors with patient-centered care goals.

Hawai'i Attorney General rejects characterization of Medicaid fraud enforcement and defends state's enforcement record Hawai'i Free Press, Honolulu, HI; by News Release from Department of the Attorney General; 5/14/26The Department of the Attorney General today rejected recent claims that Hawaiʻi “isn’t taking Medicaid fraud seriously,” calling the claims by Vice President J.D. Vance false and unsupported by the record. Since 2021, the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) has secured or helped secure judgments, settlements and recoveries in 25 cases, totaling $14,094,547.91. Last year, the MFCU secured a $30,000 settlement against a Medicaid provider for fraudulent billing. Earlier this year, the MFCU secured another Medicaid fraud settlement in the amount of $208,317.69. The MFCU also filed criminal charges earlier this year against two individuals, one of whom has already pleaded no contest as charged. [Hawai'i Medicaid Fact Sheet] Editor's Note: This article references "Hawaii's Medicaid coverage for palliative care expected to save the state money," which describes, "Hawaii is the first state to include palliative care in its Medicaid plan."

Palliative care and age-friendly care - CAPC Position Statement CAPC | Center to Advance Palliative Care; Position Statement; 5/11/26 The U.S. health care system is evolving to better meet the needs of a rapidly growing aging population by advancing age-friendly care. CAPC’s position statement outlines how palliative care can accelerate IHI recognition and support success with CMS measures. It also offers practical recommendations for leaders and policymakers to integrate palliative care into age-friendly care.

Palliative care loss hits Durango patients The Durango Herald, Durango, CO | Letters to the Editor; by Stacey Ebel; 4/24/26 My emotions are running high after learning about CommonSpirit Mercy Hospital discontinuing their palliative care program. ... My mother moved here in 2020 with numerous health issues, and I enrolled her in palliative care as I knew that at some point she would need to transition to hospice. Her palliative care nurse practitioner, Jen, visited my mother monthly in her apartment ...  Potential and past patients will now have to go to the ER or their personal PCPs for treatment. Recently, the last palliative care nurse had to discharge 200 patients. 

U.S. AI boom could cause health care costs to soar without changes to payment policy Penn LDI - Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; by Julia Hinckley, JD; 4/8/26 ... AI is already affecting health care delivery, and the choices policymakers make about payment will define its future trajectory, says LDI Senior Fellow Amol Navathe. AI is already more scalable and varied in its actions than human services. But without policies that create financial incentives to improve care, we risk driving up costs without improved outcomes or stifling innovation, writes Navathe in a recent perspective piece in Health Affairs.

Mass AI job replacement? Not in healthcare, CIOs say Becker's Health IT; by Giles Bruce; 3/18/26 While some doomsayers predict that AI will replace human workers en masse, health system CIOs told Becker’s that healthcare, so reliant on the human touch, is safe. But that doesn’t mean duties won’t change dramatically. In late February, an investment analyst scenario outlining economic cataclysm caused by AI momentarily jolted the stock market. The authors, from Citrini Research, imagined white-collar job openings “collapsing” in late 2026, with blue-collar hiring staying “relatively stable.” While healthcare may be best described as “gray-collar,” the sector is still the nation’s largest employer, driving much of the country’s job growth over the past few decades. Could AI change that equation? ...