Literature Review

Private equity’s joint venture takeover of nonprofit healthcare Private Equity Stakeholder Project; Report; 7/6/26 Behind nonprofit partnerships, private equity firms are building a growing footprint across hospitals, hospice, rehabilitation, and outpatient care. Over the past decade, private equity has dramatically expanded its presence across the healthcare system. While much of the public attention has focused on traditional acquisitions of hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes, and other providers, private equity firms are increasingly pursuing another strategy: joint ventures with nonprofit health systems. PESP’s new report examines how these partnerships have become an increasingly important avenue for private equity-backed healthcare companies to expand across hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, hospice, home health, behavioral health, and other sectors.

VITAS medical director: improve hospice referrals for cancer patients Hospice News; by Jim Parker; 7/16/26 Hospice utilization among some cancer patients is leveling off and slowing growth, but healthcare providers and medical educators can adopt certain strategies to move the needle. This is according to Dr. Ileana Leyva, regional medical director for VITAS Healthcare. ... Neuro-degenerative, lung and cardiac diseases are gaining more prominence among hospice diagnoses. In 2024, senile degeneration of the brain was the most common terminal diagnosis among Medicare decedents at 9%, followed by Alzheimer’s at 6%, according to the National Alliance for Care at Home. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease rounded out the top three at 4.2%. Lung cancer was the 11th most common diagnosis that year, at 2.1%, the highest rate for any form of cancer. Hospice News spoke with Leyva about the barriers that prevent cancer patients from accessing hospice sooner and what stakeholders can do to drive improvement.

Restaurant owner shelves Easter plans to fulfill dying man's last wish to feed his hospice nurses Daily Good; by Good News Network; 4/7/26 Frank Ozimek spent his final days in hospice care, but what occupied his mind wasn't his own suffering -- it was how to thank the nurses who had tended to him with such devotion. When his brother Ken struggled to find a restaurant open on Easter to fulfill Frank's wish to feed the hospice staff, Tommy Milani, owner of a local pizza shop, didn't hesitate: "Absolutely, whatever you need, Ken." Milani set aside his holiday plans and delivered pizzas to the entire nursing staff, completing a circle of care that began with strangers and ended with gratitude. In his last act, Frank found a way to say what perhaps mattered most -- that he had seen the kindness given to him, and wanted to give it back.  

“It wasn’t just a lyric — it was him” Their Life Song; personal story by Amber Gould, original music about her father by Johnny Warren; 7/15/26Grief doesn’t follow a timeline. Amber Gould knows this well. “There are little everyday moments that remind me of him,” she says. “Whether it’s a familiar place, a scent, or a memory that suddenly comes back, he’s still a part of my daily life. I couldn’t think of a better way to honor those memories and feel connected to him than through music.” That's where Johnny Warren and Their Life Song come in. After Amber responded to Johnny's "remembering" questions about her dad, Johnny--owner of Their Life Song--wrote a deeply personal song about him. Upon turning her memories into song, what Amber found wasn’t closure — it was connection. Editor's Note: Click here for Johnny's tender song about Amber's dad, "The River You Showed Me."

HHS pausing $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California, Minnesota over fraud LI; by Mary Chastain; 7/21/26 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have paused more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota due to fraud concerns. “That includes more than $887 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference. “If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”

“I wish to be in the same room as my wife so I can hold her hand”: CalvertHealth grants husband’s final wishThe Baynet, Calvert County, MD; by CalvertHealth; 7/19/26 It was one final wish Phillip “Phil” Pfanschmidt shared after learning he had terminal cancer. Just days earlier, his wife of more than 66 years, Joyce “Joy” Pfanschmidt, had entered hospice care at CalvertHealth Medical Center. Now, Phil had entered hospice as well. When members of the palliative care team asked about his wishes, he didn’t hesitate. He wanted to be with Joy.Caregivers across CalvertHealth worked together to make that wish a reality. Phil was reunited with Joy, and the couple spent precious moments together, hand in hand. Less than two hours later, Joy peacefully passed away with her hand resting on Phil’s arm. ...In his autobiography, Born to Live, Phil reflected on what mattered most. “For the last 64 years [as of 2024], every morning when I wake up and every evening before I go to sleep, I give thanks for the woman sleeping beside me.” ... Phil passed away on Friday, July 10, just nine days after Joy.

Toward home cancer care—Reducing time toxicity for the right patients with prostate cancerJAMA Network Open; by David-Dan Nguyen, Bruce L. Jacobs; 6/26Cancer care imposes a substantial burden, not only through the diagnosis itself and treatment-related adverse effects but also through the time spent traveling to appointments, waiting, and receiving care. Even in advanced stages of prostate cancer, many patients live for years with a chronic disease trajectory that requires ongoing monitoring, repeated visits, and long-term systemic therapy. Bange and colleagues ask whether some of this burden can be alleviated by moving elements of care from the cancer center into patients’ homes through an enhanced telehealth model for patients receiving androgen deprivation therapy. Their intervention is distinctive in combining several strategies that have individually shown promise, including paired telehealth visits with home-based phlebotomy, remote blood pressure monitoring, and at-home injections. Their central finding is encouraging: this model appeared both feasible and highly acceptable to patients and clinicians.

NPHI urges CMS and state Medicaid agencies to exempt hospice and palliative care patients from Medicaid community engagement requirements National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI), Washington, DC; Press Release; 7/23/26 The National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI) has submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and shared with state Medicaid directors a comment letter urging policymakers and regulators to ensure that individuals receiving hospice and palliative care services are explicitly exempt from Medicaid community engagement requirements during implementation of CMS’s Interim Final Rule (CMS-2454-IFC). The Interim Final Rule (CMS-2454-IFC), issued by CMS on June 1, would implement the statutory Medicaid community engagement requirements established by Congress for certain Medicaid expansion beneficiaries while supporting CMS’s objective of ensuring individuals who are medically unable to meet those requirements retain access to health coverage.

Savings in Medicare hospice payments for care provided in nursing homes U.S. HHS-OIG; Project Number OEI-02-26-00180; 7/15/26 The HHS OIG today announced an addition to the OIG Workplan to review the routine home care payments paid for patients in nursing homes. The fixed daily rates that Medicare pays hospices for routine home care provided in a nursing home include personal care services.  However, nursing homes are already required to provide personal care services to their residents.  Paying the hospice the full routine home care rate that covers personal care services when these services are already required from the nursing home can undermine the efficiency of Medicare payments and add to the incentives that bad actors have to exploit the program.  This review will determine Medicare payments for routine home care provided to hospice beneficiaries in nursing homes, estimate potential cost savings from reducing the payment to address the inefficiency in the payment structure, and examine practices of hospices with a high percentage of their beneficiaries in nursing homes. The date for the release of the report has not been announced.

Calendar Year (CY) 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule CMS Newsroom; Fact Sheet; 7/14/26 paired with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CMS CY 2027 Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule, 7/16/26; summary by guest editor Judi Lund Person On July 14, 2026, the Federal Register posted the CY 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule – CMS-1848-P. The CMS Fact Sheet on the proposed rule can be found here. While the proposed rule is 1,592 pages, there are two items of note to hospice and palliative care readers: 1) Supporting Beneficiaries Planning for Future Medical Decisions.CMS is proposing to create two new HCPCS codes to describe advance care planning (ACP) services furnished by clinical staff under the direct supervision of the billing physician or other practitioner. These new codes will more accurately distinguish and value the work done by billing practitioners from time spent by their clinical staff providing ACP services. We are further proposing that the existing ACP CPT codes 99497 and 99498 would only be used to report time personally spent by the billing practitioner. 2) RFI on Community-based Palliative Care, asking questions on eligibility for serious illness care and palliative care, the future of care management services and advanced primary care management.   

Hospice of Westchester receives donation from NYS Tribute Foundation Yonkers Times, White Plains, NY; by Dan Murphy; 7/12/26 Hospice of Westchester (HOW) recently received a $10,000 donation from NYS Tribute Foundation. The funds will support HOW’s Anna & Louis H. Shereff Bereavement Program, which provides bereavement care to patients’ families for 13 months following the loss of a loved one, as well as to all members of the community. “We are grateful to the NYS Tribute Foundation for their incredible generosity and ongoing support of our mission,” said Mary K. Spengler, RN, MS, LNHA, CEO of Hospice of Westchester. ... The NYS Tribute Foundation, which unites funeral service professionals throughout New York State, is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting education, outreach and research programs that advance the public’s understanding of end-of-life issues.