Tuesday Health

09/02/2026

September is World Alzheimer's Month 💜 a global effort to raise awareness of dementia and the millions of families navigating it.

For us, this isn't an abstract observance. Dementia is one of the most common serious illnesses our care teams support. It's also one of the hardest, because it affects not just physical health but memory, communication, and the ability to make your own wishes known.

Our interdisciplinary teams work with patients and families throughout this journey, managing symptoms, supporting caregivers, and helping ensure care stays aligned with what someone actually wanted, even after they can no longer say so themselves.

This month, we're thinking of every family navigating a dementia diagnosis, and every caregiver doing more than anyone realizes.

09/01/2026

She called us in tears. Her father was dying. He didn't want to go to the hospital. She didn't know what to do, and without help, another ER trip he'd refused was the most likely outcome.

Our nurse answered. Listened. Acted.

Within hours, hospice was in place. Her father stayed home, in comfort, surrounded by family, exactly where he wanted to be.

In moments like this, what families need most is someone who picks up the phone, hears them, and moves quickly. We're proud to be that team.

08/25/2026

Sometimes the wrong diagnosis is the most dangerous symptom of all.

A member living with severe heart failure had been told her tiredness, weight loss, and trouble sleeping were depression. She was prescribed an antidepressant, while the real problem quietly pushed her toward a hospital stay.

She wasn't depressed. Her heart failure was getting worse.

Our team caught it on a routine check-in call. We worked with her doctor. Her treatment got adjusted. She stayed out of the hospital.

The right care starts with really listening.

08/21/2026

National Wellness Month continues through August, and we keep coming back to the same question: what does wellness actually mean for someone living with a serious illness?

It's not a step count. It's waking up with less pain. It's a care team that answers the phone when something feels wrong. It's a plan that reflects what a person actually wants, not what the system defaults to.

Palliative care is a wellness intervention. It reduces symptoms. It prevents avoidable crises. It supports the caregivers who are often carrying more than anyone realizes.

And it works best when it starts early, not at a moment of crisis, but from the time a serious illness is diagnosed.

This month, we're grateful for the patients and caregivers who let us walk alongside them, and for the chance to help redefine what wellness can look like even in the hardest chapters.

08/20/2026

CMS just introduced a new scoring system for hospices, the Service and Spending Variation Index, or SSVI. It uses nine claims-based measures to evaluate hospice utilization and non-hospice spending patterns.

One industry policy expert called it "a clear message to hospice providers" that bigger changes to the Medicare Hospice Benefit may be coming.

We read it a little differently, as a signal that spending patterns before hospice matter just as much as what happens during it.

That's the entire premise behind community-based palliative care: manage symptoms, coordinate care, and support patients and families well before a serious illness reaches hospice-level acuity. Not to delay hospice when it's needed, but to make sure the months and years before that point aren't defined by avoidable ER visits and fragmented care.

As CMS builds more sophisticated ways to measure spending and utilization across the serious illness journey, we think the evidence will keep pointing the same direction: upstream, coordinated care changes outcomes.

https://hubs.la/Q04tKtPc0

The newly created service and spending variation index (SSVI) scoring system could challenge hospices’

08/18/2026

The monitor said: admit her. She said: no more hospitals.

When her remote cardiac monitor flagged an arrhythmia, the recommendation was immediate hospital admission, likely an ICU stay, likely aggressive intervention, almost certainly not what she wanted.

We were already there. Our nurse in her home. Our provider on a quick virtual visit. A goals-of-care conversation in the moment.

She chose comfort. We honored it. Hospice was in place within 24 hours.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we do is listen and act on what we hear.

08/12/2026

A woman in her nineties, living in assisted living, in pain, and scared, was about to be sent to the ER. For her, that meant hours of waiting and disorientation, with a real toll on her body.

We got there first.

Our clinician assessed her on the spot, called her daughter, and coordinated a same-day specialist visit. One hour after our visit, she was being treated for a corneal abrasion.

No ER. No admission. No long, exhausting day for someone who didn't have one to spare. Just relief, and a family who could breathe again.

08/10/2026

Recently, more than 200 healthcare organizations called on Congress to make Medicare telehealth coverage permanent. We stand with them.

For patients living with serious illness, managing pain, breathlessness, fatigue, and the day-to-day weight of a complex diagnosis, getting to a clinic isn't always possible. And it shouldn't have to be. The ability to reach a clinician from home is not a convenience. It is a fundamental part of what it means to receive care.

Our care model allows patients and caregivers to access their care team 24/7, wherever they are. That flexibility has made a measurable difference in our members' ability to manage symptoms in their place of comfort and avoid unnecessary emergency visits and hospitalizations.

Telehealth should not expire. It should be a permanent part of how Medicare supports the people who need it most.

https://hubs.la/Q04rTg_q0

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 23, 2026 Coalition of More Than 200 Health Care Organizations Delivers Telehealth Voters Pledge to Congress Patients, clinicians, and health system leaders join Members of Congress on Capitol Hill to call for permanent Medicare telehealth access Patients, clinicians, and h...

08/07/2026

On July 30, CMS published the FY 2027 Hospice Final Rule — and included in it is something worth paying attention to: a summary of comments received on the community palliative care services Request for Information.

CMS asked the field how to better support community-based palliative care under existing Medicare benefits. The field responded. And CMS included that summary in a final rule, signaling that sub-regulatory guidance on community palliative care could follow this fall, before another full rulemaking cycle.

This matters because the current path, routing palliative care through the home health benefit, has real limitations. Patients must be homebound. Quality measures are designed for recovery, not comfort care. The interdisciplinary intensity that defines serious illness care doesn't fit neatly into a home health billing structure.

The conversation is moving. There is a growing body of evidence that purpose-built, payer-partnered palliative care delivers different and better results for patients with serious illness.

We're glad CMS is listening, and the August 31 comment deadline on the Home Health proposed rule is still open for those who want to weigh in.

https://hubs.la/Q04rTkTy0


Editorial note:

Fiscal Year 2027 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update and Hospice Quality Reporting Program Requirements Final Rule (CMS-1851-F)On July 30, 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule (CMS-1851-F) that would update Medicare hospice payments and the aggregate ca...

08/05/2026

August is National Wellness Month. We want to offer a different way of thinking about what wellness looks like for people living with serious illness.

For our members, wellness isn't about a step count or a fitness goal. It looks like waking up with less pain. Having a nurse call back at 2 a.m. when something doesn't feel right. A care plan that reflects what you actually want, not what the system defaults to. A caregiver who feels less alone.

Palliative care is a wellness intervention. It reduces symptoms. It prevents crises. It gives patients and families the support they need to make decisions that align with their values.

And it works best when it starts early, not at the moment of crisis, but from the time a serious illness is diagnosed.

This month, we're thinking about the patients and caregivers we have the privilege of supporting, and what living well actually means when the stakes are high.