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Are you distressed by the many negative news stories we’ve seen about hospice in recent days?  I certainly am.

            From the headlines last week in the Dallas Morning News -  Frisco hospice exec admits overdosing patients ‘to hasten their deaths’ and make more money- to the report out this week from the Office of the Inspector General, Vulnerabilities in the Medicare Hospice Program Affect Quality Care and Program Integrity: An OIG Portfolio, which focused on the very things that are, or are supposed to be the hallmarks of hospice care: pain management, patient AND family support, 27/7 care availability and provision of the 4 levels of hospice care. What did they find? That  “hospices do not always provide needed services to beneficiaries and sometimes provide poor quality care. In some cases, hospices were not able to effectively manage symptoms or...