Inside Hospice with Jim Parker

I am off to Washington, D.C., today to visit Capitol Hill with a group of hospice leaders and the National Alliance for Care at Home. This is part of the Alliance’s annual advocacy week event. One of the things I plan to ask about on the Hill is the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (PCHETA).

I am not a big video game player, but I recently bought a new system. My daughters, who live in different states now, play together online, and I thought I would join them. However, I just can’t figure out the game they play, Fortnite. I get “killed” by other online players before I can get my bearings or do anything. But I will keep at it. We had a big story on Hospice News yesterday.

Photo credit: jackelberry I hope everybody enjoys the forthcoming Labor Day holiday. We are supposed to go camping with friends, but it might be canceled. I wait in Limbo. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing for Hospice News Denis Fleming, Jr., the newly appointed chief government affairs officer for the National Alliance for Care at Home.

I may go a little overboard when it comes to art. My three-bedroom apartment has 113 art pieces on the walls, stacks of books, and lots of little sculptures or pottery. We acquired some new art pieces recently, and this past weekend it was time to hang them. It required moving a lot of things around. The photo above is one the new paintings, by U.S. artist Jay Bonadio. Art illuminates life.

I recently went down to the neighborhood I grew up in on the South Side of Chicago. It’s really not the best area to say the least, but it does boast the best pizza I have ever had — Palermo’s on 63rd Street. So, I made the drive with my oldest daughter, Katelyn, my partner, Allison, and a group of friends. While we were enjoying our dinner, the restaurant’s owner came out and talked with us for a while.

Photo credit: Jerboa_in_the_air I recently interviewed Dr. Kurt Merkelz, the chief medical officer of Compassus, for Hospice News. We had a great conversation focused largely on end-of-life planning and patients coming onto hospice too late. However, he also had things to say about Medicare Hospice Benefit reform, with ideas about a new potential payment model. Not all of that was able to fit into the Hospice News piece, so I wanted to share more of the interview here.

Photo credit: Allison Reese I turned 50 on Wednesday, so that was weird. This was a milestone, of course. On the one hand, it’s just one more year clicking away, but on the other, a good moment to stop and reflect a little bit. I feel the age to a minor degree at this point. I am slowing down a little, going gray and my knees hurt sometimes, but I am overall in pretty good health and grateful for that. But other things are changing too, not because of my birthday but coinciding with it.

I just returned from a voyage to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and it was amazing. They are such incredibly beautiful places. I saw mountains, waterfalls, whales, seals, dolphins, puffins, Viking historical sites, glorious works of art and much more. The picture you see above is one I took of a lovely sunset off the coast. But today what I really want to talk about is my mom. August 9 was the third anniversary of her death at 82. It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years already.

Photo credit: Ahmad Ardity I asked an AI program whether I should enter hospice, thinking it would give me bad advice so I could complain about it. However, it actually gave me good advice, so I am going to write about something else. But I will give you a couple of nuggets from the AI’s response: “[Entering hospice] depends on your medical situation, your goals, and what matters most to you.

When I make buying decisions, I try to lean into the most expensive, inconvenient and complex options while spending as little as possible on better value products and services. Oh wait, sorry. That wasn’t me; that was the government. That opening was a little tongue-in-cheek. To be fair, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) isn’t necessarily allocating larger Medicare increases to hospitals, for example.