Literature Review

Home-health [and hospice] provider Enhabit to go private in $1.1 billion deal with Kinderhook Reuters; by Kamal Choudhury; 2/23/26 Enhabit (EHAB.N), said on Monday [2/23] private equity firm Kinderhook Industries will buy the home-health services provider and take it private in a deal worth about $1.1 billion. ... The Dallas‑based company will keep its name and continue operating its 249 home health locations and 117 hospice locations across 34 U.S. states. ... The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Enhabit said its shares will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange when the transaction closes.

Difficult encounters: How to set boundaries in the context of structural inequitiesJournal of Pain & Symptom Management; by Carrie C. Wu, Erik K. Fromme; 1/26Difficult encounters between patients and clinicians impact all areas of medical care, yet how to manage them is not routinely taught in medical training. This paper presents a case of a patient with cancer who struggled with emotional outbursts and impulsive behaviors. In the context of the racial trauma and socioeconomic challenges that the patient also experienced, the team struggled with boundary setting. We will review both traditional and contemporary approaches to the management of difficult clinician-patient interactions, while also addressing some of the limitations of existing frameworks. We will explore the role of bias in boundary setting and make suggestions for individual-, team-, and system-level approaches.

[England] Almost one in three people in England die without the basic care they need Medical Xpress; by King's College London, edited by Lisa Lock; 2/16/26 About 170,000 people in England every year spend their final days in pain, distress or without vital support that should be available to everyone at the end of life. These are the findings of the first major study in more than a decade to estimate unmet palliative care needs among people at the end of life. The paper was led by researchers at King's College London and Hull York Medical School, University of Hull, with contributions from the University of Edinburgh and was published in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy.

Embedding care in the ED: Liz Goldberg and Lauren Southerland GeriPal; podcast by Alex Smith with Dr. Liz Goldberg and Dr. Lauren Southerland; 2/12/26 The idea of embedding various forms of non-emergency care in the emergency department makes a WORLD of sense.  If an older adult comes into the ED with a fall, the minimum the ED has to do is address the fall injury and send them out. But many emergency providers realize this is often a band aid.  They see that patient again the next time they fall.  And again.  And again.  The same could be said for the patient who is malnourished and dehydrated and admitted for “failure to thrive,” again. And again. Our two guests today, Liz Goldberg and Lauren Southerland, both emergency medicine physician-researchers, have had enough.  ...

This American Heart Month, Carolina Caring elevates cardiac care for serious illness Carolina Caring, Newton, NC; Press Release; 2/9/26 February is American Heart Month, a national effort to raise awareness about heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. As of 2025, 6.7 million Americans over the age of 20 are living with heart failure (Heart Failure Society of America, 2025). ... In response, Carolina Caring’s Advanced Cardiac Care program provides effective, tailored support to patients with chronic heart conditions. As the first cardiac care program of its kind in North Carolina, Carolina Caring combines nationally recognized standards of care with a home-based hospice approach. 

VITAS CEO Joel Wherley: 4 core values of hospice care Hospice News; by Jim Parker; 2/6/26 A mission-driven approach that prioritizes patient and employee well-being is crucial to success as a hospice business, according to Joel Wherley, president and CEO of VITAS Healthcare. ... Hospice News sat down with Wherley at the Home Care 100 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona to discuss his outlook for hospice in 2026, what the community can expect for VITAS in 2026 and what keeps him up at night as a health care leader. ...

Executive Personnel Changes - 2/13/26

Medical Aid in Dying and our ethical duties—Call to actionJAMA Health Forum; by Yesne Alici, Liz Blackler, Julia Danielle Kulikowski, Amy Scharf; 1/26Medical aid in dying (MAID) is legal in 11 US states and Washington, DC, and is being actively considered in 18 additional states ... In all jurisdictions where MAID is legal, hospital systems have the option to opt out of providing MAID services but are legally obligated to share information about where patients can access resources. We maintain that all hospital systems and individual clinicians have an ethical responsibility to go beyond simply sharing information. Patients are going to ask about MAID, and institutions are ethically obligated to establish comprehensive policies that empower and encourage their clinical staffs—primarily physicians but also nurses and advanced practice clinicians—to purposefully and thoughtfully respond. Here, we describe the experience of our institution, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), in developing policies and procedures to fulfill this responsibility and highlight lessons for other health care organizations and oncology practices seeking to accomplish similar goals.

Senior Nannies Home Care Services joins forces with Choice Health at Home Desert Sun, EIN Presswire, Tyler, TX; Press Release; 1/30/26 Senior Nannies Home Care Services and Senior Advantages Assisted Living Placement Services (“Senior Nannies”), ... is proud to announce it has joined forces with Choice Health at Home (“Choice”), a leading multi-state operator of home health, hospice, personal care, rehabilitation, and specialty in-home services. The transaction marks Choice’s entry into the Southeastern United States, establishing Florida as a strategic anchor and creating a scaled, integrated personal care platform to support a broader regional expansion.

What Salem-area lawmakers are prioritizing for the 2026 session Salem Reporter, Salem, OR; by Rachel Alexander and Hailey Cook; 2/4/26 ... Oregon’s month-long legislative session got underway on Monday, Feb.2. The fast-paced short session occurs in even years. ... Hospice care oversight: SB 1575 would add protections for patients in hospice care. The new rules would include requiring a background check for business owners, ensuring agencies have the financial resources to care for patients and pausing the issuance of new hospice licenses until the state rules are implemented.  Patterson said the change was at the request of the Oregon Hospice and Palliative Care Association. “In other states there has been a lot of fraud and abuse, and we want to prevent that from happening here in Oregon,” she said. 

Woman who allegedly stole $3.2m from Medicare boasted about lavish home Complex; by Helen Storms; 2/7/26 A California woman has been arrested after allegedly stealing $3.2 million from Medicare as part of an elaborate hospice scam. The woman, identified as 49-year-old Flor Mora, shared photos of the lavish $4 million dream home she bought from the funds she is accused of stealing before being hit with felony charges. Mora purchased the luxurious seaside home located in the Carmel Highlands in Monterey County, California, in November 2025. It would later be featured in the Washington Street Journal and even voted the House of the Year. Little did voters know that Mora had paid for the early 20th-century style home with reportedly stolen funds.Editor's Note: For more, visit our post yesterday, "California AG Bonta charges 7 in Monterey County over hospice fraud scheme totaling $3.2m."

Hospice doctor shares what happens in the moments immediately after death Good; by Adam Albright Hanna; 2/3/26 Throughout human history, one question has bewildered every civilization, society, and individual. What happens after we die? For some people, it is a question for science. For others, it is a question of faith. But for Dr. B.J. Miller, it is a question that he is totally fine not knowing the answer to. Miller is a hospice and palliative care physician at the University of California, San Francisco. He is one of the world's leading voices on dignified death, and for him, the end of life is actually about the living. ... "I’ve been around people who are just about to die," Miller said. "Bodies that have just died. And there is this lingering sense, it’s true. There’s a feeling. It’s a palpable... yeah, there’s a lingering." ... "I didn’t need to have control over everything, I didn’t need to know the answers anymore. I mean, I love not knowing. The answer’s unimportant. It’s just a sacred and gorgeous moment."Editor's Note: Having served in direct hospice patient care from 1993–2002, I was present with many persons during their active dying and in the moments just after death, including attending deaths as a chaplain. Over time—and especially through the intimate experience of my parents’ deaths—that sense of sacredness Dr. Miller describes remains real for me. So I find myself wondering and asking non-clinical leaders: when you look at Average Daily Census (ADC), Length of Stay (LOS), and other familiar metrics, what do you see? Numbers on a spreadsheet? Or living measures of something immeasurably human—something that truly matters?

Social Media Watch 2/6/26