Literature Review

Kendall Burrows Foundation works toward $1 million for pediatric care WMAR-2 ABC, Baltimore, MD; by Elsa M.; 9/20/26  The Kendall Burrows Foundation is encouraging Marylanders to make a difference in the lives of children and families facing serious medical challenges. Since 2015, the foundation has partnered with the Johns Hopkins Children's Center Harriet Lane Compassionate Care Program to help create supportive and healing environments for children receiving pediatric palliative care and for the families who care for them. ... This year, organizers are aiming to reach a significant milestone. The foundation reports that it has raised and donated $882,000 to date and hopes to surpass $1 million through continued community support.

Senior health, home health & hospice stocks Q2 teardown: Brookdale (NYSE:BKD) vs the rest Fox 46; Press Release; 9/17/26 Wrapping up Q2 earnings, we look at the numbers and key takeaways for the senior health, home health & hospice stocks, including Brookdale (NYSE:BKD) and its peers. ... The 7 senior health, home health & hospice stocks we track reported a mixed Q2. As a group, revenues missed analysts’ consensus estimates by 0.5%. Amidst this news, share prices of the companies have had a rough stretch. On average, they are down 10.6% since the latest earnings results.

CMS oversight did not prevent Medicare Part D sponsors from making $587.7 million in ineligible payments to pharmacies for drugs available over the counter but labeled as prescription-only United States Government HHS-OIG; Report number OAS-24-02-004; issued on 8/31/26, posted on 9/2/26 

H.R.9703 - Improving access to transfusion care for hospice patients act of 2026 U.S. Congress.gov, House Ways and Means Committee; sponsored by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI-6); bill introduced 7/15/26 H.R. 9703: To require the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to test allowing blood transfusions to be paid separately from the Medicare hospice all-inclusive per diem payment.

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.