Get Ready for August Recess!

NHPCO Hospice Action Network

TheAugust recess is around the corner! From August 3 - September 8, members of Congress will be out of DC and returning to their home districts. This is an ideal opportunity to strengthen relationships with legislators and staffers, especially by further educating about and advocating for key issues.

Show Congress the essential role that hospice and palliative care serve in their own backyards! This is a critical moment for hospice and palliative care--with the upcoming hospice Special Focus Program, the need for continued telehealth flexibilities, the urgency to address fraud, and benefits access issues for Veterans, it is vital for advocates and organizations to make the most of this recess.

The Hospice Action Network has everything you need to connect with your Congressional representatives during the recess (and beyond!):

1) Find out who represents you in Congress, if they've co-sponsored any of our priority bills, where their district offices are, and how to contact them through our Action Center.

2) Request an in-district meeting OR invite your legislator on a tour or to another event. 
OR
If you cannot arrange a meeting or tour at this time, you can always take action and contact them using our Action Center. We have Action Alerts ready in support of the hospice workforce, telehealth, and Veterans care.

3) Use our guides to plan for a productive meeting or an engaging visit. If you need to practice meeting with a legislative office, try this practice tool.

4) Don't forget to take photos. Use our social media guide to share about your visit, tour, or event.

5) Review our policy issues before legislative meetings. We have one-pagers and talking points on key issues for advocates to use in meetings, including:

• The Hospice Benefit: One Pager

• President Carter and Long Hospice Stays: One Pager | Talking Points  

• Program Integrity: One Pager | Talking Points

• Hospice Special Focus Program: One Pager | Talking Points

• Hospice Payment: One Pager | Talking Points

• Hospice Workforce: One Pager | Talking Points

• Telehealth Flexibilities: One Pager | Talking Points

• Veterans Care: One Pager | Talking Points

• Pediatric Palliative care: One Pager | Talking Points

Thank you for your efforts on behalf of hospice and palliative care. We hope these tools and guides will serve you well this summer and in the future.

Stephanie Marburger

Manager, Grassroots Advocacy

National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization | Hospice Action Network

Neuroscientists Discover Brain Circuitry of Placebo Effect for Pain Relief

Neuroscience / By University of North Carolina Health Care

The placebo effect is very real. This we've known for decades, as seen in real-life observations and the best double-blinded randomized clinical trials researchers have devised for many diseases and conditions, especially pain. And yet, how and why the placebo effect occurs has remained a mystery. Now, neuroscientists have discovered a key piece of the placebo effect puzzle.

Publishing in Nature, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine—with colleagues from Stanford, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science—discovered a pain control pathway that links the cingulate cortex in the front of the brain, through the pons region of the brainstem, to cerebellum in the back of the brain.

The researchers, led by Greg Scherrer, PharmD, Ph.D., associate professor in the UNC Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, the UNC Neuroscience Center, and the UNC Department of Pharmacology, then showed that certain neurons and synapses along this pathway are highly activated when mice expect pain relief and experience pain relief, even when there is no medication involved.

"That neurons in our cerebral cortex communicate with the pons and cerebellum to adjust pain thresholds based on our expectations is both completely unexpected, given our previous understanding of the pain circuitry, and incredibly exciting," said Scherrer. "Our results do open the possibility of activating this pathway through other therapeutic means, such as drugs or neurostimulation methods to treat pain."

Scherrer and colleagues said research provides a new framework for investigating the brain pathways underlying other mind-body interactions and placebo effects beyond the ones involved in pain…

Read Full Article

Positive Aging: Can a Broken Heart Kill You?

ArcaMax / By Marilyn Murray Willison

I had never heard of what is officially labeled "broken heart syndrome" until a friend of mine collapsed five weeks after her long-term sweetheart died. She was rushed to the emergency room and admitted into the hospital, but within 36 hours, she, too, was dead. When 92-year-old former first lady Barbara Bush died in 2018, her husband -- of 73 years! -- was admitted to the hospital the day after her funeral. He recovered and was able to return home, but many observers worried that he would develop takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which often claims the lives of brokenhearted survivors.

The condition -- which is the result of abnormal movements of the walls of the left ventricle in the heart -- was first named by Japanese physicians back in 1990. Unlike a standard heart attack, broken heart syndrome involves a bulging ventricle that resembles a "tako-tsubo," which is a type of round-bottomed narrow-necked pot used by fishermen in Japan to trap octopuses.

According to Dr. Marc Wilkinson, a MercyCare physician in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the syndrome really can reflect sorrow and distress. "It really is a broken heart. The stress of a spouse dying is one of the top stressors that anyone can face." And although it's not particularly common, it is "more common than people realize." But broken heart syndrome isn't limited to the loss of a long-term spouse. In fact, several situations that trigger intense physical or emotional reactions can cause a surge of stress hormones that can damage the heart. These include the following: an asthma attack; a sudden surprise; a car (or other) accident; domestic violence; a fierce argument; financial loss; intense fear; public speaking; receiving terrible life-changing news; a serious illness; a medical procedure or surgery; severe pain; a sudden drop in blood pressure; the unexpected illness, injury or loss of a close relative, friend or pet.

When Japanese doctors began studying broken heart syndrome, they discovered that more than 90% of their reported cases were among women ages 58 to 75. And there are indications that about 5% of women who are being evaluated for a heart attack actually have takotsubo cardiomyopathy…

Read Full Article

Trella Health Unveils its 2024 Post-Acute Care Industry Trend Report

PR Newswire / Trella Health
 
"As part of our mission to promote industry-wide performance visibility, our team is excited to share the findings of this year's Post-Acute Care Industry Trend Report," said Scott Tapp, CEO of Trella Health. "At Trella Health, we believe in the power of data to foster meaningful change in healthcare. Continuous innovation in an industry requires strong collaboration, and with data-backed insights, we are shaping the future of healthcare together."
 
Below are a few key takeaways from this year's report:

• Medicare Advantage enrollment continues to increase, and MA penetration eclipsed the much-anticipated 50% mark in 2023, hitting 54.7% as of February 2024.
• FFS inpatient discharge instruction rates for home health and skilled nursing continue to inch closer to pre-pandemic levels, though these rates remained more stable than previous year-over-year changes.
• Annualized changes in home health (-3.0% between 2022 Q3 and 2023 Q3 reporting periods) and skilled nursing (-13.8% between 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q4 reporting periods) FFS admissions continue to decrease due to increased MA enrollment.
• Hospice admissions increased by 2.1% between the 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q4 reporting periods. Further, hospice utilization increased to 49.8% in the 2023 Q4 reporting period, four percentage points higher than the 2020 Q4 reporting period. This was due to lower utilization rates during the pandemic when COVID-related deaths were usually not admitted into hospice.

Trella Health invites you to leverage the insights in this report to drive innovation, elevate your business, and build a stronger future for the entire industry.
 
Read the full press-release here or access the Post-Acute Care Industry Trends Report here.