Literature Review

Help Serenity Hospice workers win their unionSEIU503; 4/18/24Workers at Serenity Hospice have been organizing for pay equity, adequate raises, affordable health care, regular hours, PTO, and the ability to manage trauma and compassion fatigue. The workers unanimously decided to form a union, and asked management to voluntarily recognize them. Serenity’s parent company (Addus Healthcare) already has SEIU-represented employees at its home health agency in Eugene. Instead, Addus hired one of the most expensive union-busing law firms in the country, and has been paying them hundreds of dollars per hour to spread anti-union propaganda. Workers are sticking together and staying strong, and plan to vote YES in their union election next week. Editor's Note: Hospice & Palliative Care Today's posting of this article denotes neither support nor opposition to this action. Rather, we are reporting it for hospice and palliative care leadership awareness. Unions and strikes among healthcare professionals--for these same cited reasons--continue to be a growing trend, nationwide.

Volunteers make best days possible for 600 people a day at VNA Hospice NWIGreatNews.Life, Valparaiso, IN; 5/19/24VNA Hospice NWI serves over 600 people a day. From Hospice and Palliative Care, Grief Support services for adults and children to the Medical Guardian help button and a Meals on Wheels program, the impact of VNA services around the region is tremendous. The VNA staff work tirelessly to ensure these essential services are available each day – but they can’t do it alone. Their team relies on an army of volunteers, who do everything from stuffing envelopes and labeling meal bags, to working directly with hospice patients and bereaved children, and delivering the meals. Maria Galka, Director of Development for VNA Hospice, said that the organization’s volunteers outnumber its staff by about five to one. Editor's Note: April's Volunteer Appreciation Month is still underway. Learn from this superb article, posted on an online community site. VNA Hospice NWI's astonishing volunteer program bears repeating: "... the organization’s volunteers outnumber its staff by about five to one."

Hospice choices: VITAS® Healthcare opens in Alabama, expands in Florida Panhandle Investors Observer, GlobeNewswire via QuoteMedia; 4/17/24 Hospice patients and their families in the Florida Panhandle and areas in Southern Alabama can now access quality end-of-life services with VITAS Healthcare. Starting today, the nation’s largest and leading provider of end-of-life care begins accepting referrals and admitting seriously ill patients throughout Tallahassee in Florida and Daphne-Mobile and Dothan in Alabama. ... In March 2024, VITAS entered into an agreement to acquire all hospice operations and an assisted living facility from Covenant Care. 

Rock River Hospice and Home receives $5,000 grant Shaw Local News Network; 4/18/24The Do it Best Foundation announced that a $5,000 grant has been awarded to Rock River Hospice and Home [Sterling, IL]. “Rock River is a regional leader in providing end-of-life care,” said Rich Jordan, general manager at the Do it Best warehouse in nearby Dixon. “No one is ever turned away from their services for their inability to pay, which is why donations and grants are so important. We’re honored to support their efforts to treat every patient and their families with dignity and respect.”

Valley Health and Blue Ridge Hospice collaborate to offer hospice in the hospital program at Shenandoah Memorial Hospital in Woodstock, VA Valley Health Press Release; 4/15/24 Valley Health and Blue Ridge Hospice have expanded their collaborative Hospice in the Hospital program to Shenandoah Memorial Hospital in Woodstock, VA. On April 1, the two signed an agreement for Blue Ridge Hospice to work alongside the hospital’s care team to provide supplemental comfort care services to ensure eligible patients and families receive the most complete and comprehensive care during and after their stay at the hospital.

CT Hospice says it can’t provide home care under bill to protect healthcare workersCT News Junkie, by John Ferraro; 4/16/24Connecticut Hospice has warned lawmakers it will be unable to care for gravely ill patients in their homes under a proposed law aimed at protecting home healthcare workers. At issue is Senate Bill 1, which would require organizations that care for people in their homes to conduct background checks on the clients and anyone in the location where care is being given. ... Barbara Pearce, the chief executive officer of Connecticut Hospice, urged lawmakers to remove Connecticut Hospice from entities that would be required to conduct those background checks, noting that the organization which provides end-of-life care is typically called into homes when a patient has days left to live. “Our national hospice organization could find no similar bill in any other state,” Pearce wrote in testimony to the Public Health Committee. “This bill is too broad, too unclear as to requirements, not guaranteed to achieve its aims, duplicative of other procedures required in hospice care, and contradictory to certain regulations of Medicare.” ...Editor's Note: See the previous article in our newsletter today, After death of nurses, CT lawmakers look for solutions: 'We just cannot ignore that risk'.

Canyon Lake Hospice Care extends compassionate services to El Cajon community Iowanews Headlines; 4/12/24 Canyon Lake Hospice Care, known for its unwavering commitment to providing compassionate end-of-life support, is extending its services to the El Cajon community. This expansion heralds a significant milestone, not just for Canyon Lake Hospice Care, but also for the residents of El Cajon who seek specialized hospice care.

[$300k to inpatient hospice care] Youngkin presents budget reflecting compromise Blue Ridge Leader & Loudon Today; 4/13/24 Gov. Glenn Youngkin on April 8, released a package of 242 budget amendments to find common ground with the General Assembly on a new, two-year budget. The propose package eliminates all tax decreases and increases, includes a $21.3 billion record investment for K-12 education, and provides $3.2 billion on new spending on health and human resources. ... [Among many other line items, this includes:] $300,000 for inpatient hospice care in Aldie. 

Village Hospice hosts Vietnam Veteran’s Breakfast CBS KCTV 5, Kansas City, MO; 4/10/24 Village Hospice provides many services to support their residents, including ways to honor their residents that are veterans. Jillian hears about a recent Vietnam Veterans’ Breakfast and how it celebrated Veterans living at John Knox Village. 

New DOJ rules for online healthcare content make sure seniors aren’t taken offline McKnights Senior Living, by Aaron Dorman; 4/11/24The Department of Justice took steps earlier this week to help make sure old adults have appropriate access to valuable web content they need for understanding important healthcare and coverage decisions. State and government agencies, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, must abide by new technical standards, according to a new DOJ rule signed Monday [4/1/24]. “Just as stairs can exclude people who use wheelchairs from accessing government buildings,” the official rule states, “inaccessible web content and mobile apps can exclude people with a range of disabilities from accessing government services.” The technical requirements of the rule are extensive — the updated document is almost 300 pages long — but the overall purpose is to instruct agencies on their obligations to account for possible disabilities.

Angela Hospice opening a hospice residence at Lourdes Senior Community in Waterford Detroit Regional Chamber, by Angela Hospice; 4/10/24 Angela Hospice will expand its caring services to the Waterford community and beyond, when it begins operating a 15-bed hospice residence at Lourdes Senior Community this summer and providing additional home hospice services in the area. The non-profit will extend its geographic reach further into north Oakland County, offering additional outreach to benefit all in the community, not just those on hospice care, through transformational grief support groups, educational outreach, and their Good Samaritan program, which serves those who are without insurance or the ability to pay for hospice.

HopeHealth’s expanding scope of pediatric hospice, palliative services Hospice News, by Holly Vossel; 4/8/24 HopeHealth has been growing its pediatric hospice and supportive care service lines in recent years to address a range of unmet needs among seriously ill children and their families. The nonprofit health system serves Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. ... Hospice News recently sat down with pediatrician Dr. Rebecca MacDonell-Yilmaz, medical director of HopeHealth’s pediatric supportive services. 

City-country mortality gap widens amid persistent holes in rural health care access KFF Health News, by Jazmin Orozco Rodriquez; 4/9/24 The health disparities between rural and urban Americans have long been documented, but a recent report from the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service found the chasm has grown in recent decades. In their examination, USDA researchers found rural Americans from the ages of 25 to 54 die from natural causes, like chronic diseases and cancer, at wildly higher rates than the same age group living in urban areas. ... In 1999, the natural-cause mortality rate for people ages 25 to 54 in rural areas was only 6% higher than for city dwellers in the same age bracket. By 2019, the gap widened to 43%.