Read: A Parting Lesson from My Parents

After helping three family members with their end of life, Andrew Dreyfus, CEO and President of Blue Cross Blue Shield in Massachusetts, explains that the real job of medicine is not to ensure health and survival but to ensure well-being.

Be Inspired: An End-of-Life Doctor Faces His Own End

An article in Harper's Magazine describes what a long-term hospice supporter and dying with dignity pioneer Peter Rasmussen chose for his own end-of-life experience.

Listen: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement explores Medicare Reimbursement and Meaningful Conversations about End-of-Life Care

A recent WIHI program featured WIHI: Medicare Reimbursement and Meaningful Conversations about End-of-Life Care (click on the link for highlights of the show). The panel included nationally renowned contributors to the field including The Conversation Project's Harriet Warshaw, as well as Kate Lally, Director of Palliative Care, Care New England, Holly Oh, CMO The Dimock Center, and Jocelyn Moore, Managing Director of The Glover Park Group.

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Read: After the Cranberries and Pie, Let's Talk About Death

Nancy Shute writes compellingly about The Conversation for NPR.
"Lean into it, step up to the plate," says Dr Susan Tolle, director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health Science University. "On Thanksgiving after dinner, tell your children what you want. You really will lift a burden."

View: Interactive Map on Palliative Care Access by State

The Center to Advance Palliative Care has released its State by State Report Card on palliative care access for 2015. View the interactive map here and read about key findings. Accompanying article, published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Read: Program Dramatically Boosts Number of Patients Able to Die at Home

A new program called the Palliative Care Home Support Program, launched in 2013 in Australia, has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of people who are able to die in the comfort of their own home.

Read: Time off of Work Can Help Loved Ones Die at Home

A new study by Barbara Gomes, from the Cicely Saunders Institute at Kings College London, reveals for the first time just how important compassionate care benefits are in allowing loved ones to die in peace at home.

Read: The UK leads the world in palliative care

According to a recent report conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the UK places first in the world in terms of end-of-life care. The US rated ninth, behind the Netherlands and Germany. Iraq came in at the bottom of the list.

Read: "You never fully get over it" - experiencing complicated grief

One woman's journey with grief. The Bangor Daily News article mentions the Grief Intensity Scale, which was developed at the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Listen: Palliative nurse Theresa Brown on the privilege of caring for dying patients

Terri Gross interviews Theresa Brown, whose latest release, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives, describes her experiences working as a nurse in a busy hospital's oncology department.

Read: People want doctors to be paid to discuss end-of-life with patients

The Huffington Post cuts straight to the chase: Americans Love 'Death Panels.' Sorry, Sarah Palin!
The original Kaiser Family Foundation article and poll results, which also examines current public opinion on the American Care Act.

Read: Oliver Sacks: My Periodic Table

Oliver Sacks writes about how science has comforted him through life, with loss, and as he approached death.

Listen: Tales from a Music Thanatologist

Somerville, MA resident Jennifer L. Hollis describes her experiences providing a gentle soundtrack for hospice patients for over a decade.

Watch: Love and Stuff

After her mother passes away, filmmaker Judith Helfand and her brothers try to figure out with what to do with all her belongings, and how to live without a mother.

Watch: The Racial Gap in Hospice Care in America

PBS Newshour explores why so few African American seniors enlist in hospice.

Read the Kaiser Health News article.

Taking a Closer Look at the Intersection of Heart Disease and Hospice Care

Heart disease is the world's number one killer - and hospice is habitually failing those who suffer from it.

Read: Right to Die Campaign Gains in Popularity in the US and Globally

Campaigns to let doctors help the suffering and terminally ill to die are gathering momentum across the West.

What do you think about doctor assisted dying? Compare your views to the Ipsos MORI results commissioned by the Economist in June 2015.

Read: Why End of life discussions are important, and how the new Medicare guidelines can help

Felice J. Freyer writes about how the new guidelines may boost discussions on end of life care. 

Listen: Remembering the Roots of Hospice: An Interview with Cicely Saunders

Medical Sociology Professor David Clark recorded his last interview with Dame Cecily Saunders in March 2005, just a few months before she died. He recently wrote an article about her work to end human suffering and is in the process of writing a biography about her.

Read: Is Regionalization the Future for Facilities?

Four rural hospitals in northern NH have announced they are forming a new partnership. CEOs Russell Keene of Androscoggin Valley Hospital, Warren West of Littleton Regional Healthcare, Peter Gosline of Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital and Scott Howe of Weeks Medical Center have announced that they will form a nonprofit organization known as North Country Healthcare, expected to be in place in early 2016.

Keene said what is unique is that the hospitals are aligning and combining with each other, not a much larger third party.

Gosline said the formation of North Country Healthcare would preserve "access to high-quality, personal health care for people in the North Country," while positioning the four member hospitals "to meet future challenges."

Expected benefits include increased purchasing power and financial stability. While the expectation is that all the hospitals will offer the same high standard of care, specialized services may be limited to one or two facilities. Each hospital is committed to participate for three years, after which it may exercise an exit clause.

State Sen. Jeff Woodburn, D-Dalton, hailed the announcement about North Country Healthcare, and praised the CEOs for representing "a shining example of how to do regionalization."

Read: Medicare to Reimburse for End of Life Discussions

The NY Times features a comprehensive article on Medicare's plans to reimburse doctors for end of life discussions.

Attend: The Wake Up to Dying Project

The Wake up to Dying Project,  an awareness-building campaign that encourages people to talk about death and dying, is in Burlington, Vermont from 16-19 July.

Visitors can:

• listen to audio stories about death, dying and life,
• add your bucket list goals to our massive chalkboard,
• learn about and take away end-of-life resources,
• attend a workshop or community discussion with local leaders in end-of-life care, and
• bring what you learn and experience back to their home and community.

All events are free and open to the public. 

Read: How Ethnicity and Language Get in the Way of the Conversation

The Washington Post's article explores how ethnicity complicates patient-doctor discussions about death and dying.

Read: Why Hospice Isn't Cutting Costs Like it is Supposed To

This article explains why hospice seems to be costing more, rather than less, especially when it comes to nursing homes and dementia patients. Based on a recent New England Journal of Medicine report (available to subscribers only).

Watch: The Architecture of Death

UK Architect Allison Killing talks about how architecture can improve the dying process and explores the architecture of death in her Death in Venice exhibit.

Listen: We Don't Fully Grow Up Until We Lose Our Parents

NPR journalist Scott Simon provides the latest update to his series of tweets about his mother's passing.

Read: The Importance of Advocating for End-of-Life Care

MedPage Today reports on the need for practitioners and stakeholders to keep the debate about end-of-life care going.

View: Speak Up

An inspiring video encouraging you to speak up on National Healthcare Decisions Day

NHDD Speak Up Video from NHDD on Vimeo.

View: How do you want to die? A mission to make death part of popular conversation

How do you want to die? A mission to make death part of popular conversation

Be a Catalyst on National Healthcare Decisions Day

April 16 is National Healthcare Decisions Day, and NHHPCO joins the rest of the nation in educating and empowering the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning.


Below we list some resources that will help you bring NHDD to your community. Whether hosting a game night or helping someone with their advance directives, your efforts will help all of us in starting these difficult - but critically important - conversations. Be a catalyst for the cause, and send us a note here to tell us how it went.

• The NHDD website provides easy-to-understand directions in getting advance directives, along with a slew of resources for anyone coming to the subject for the first time.
• Host a game night! My Gift of Grace is a card game that has been carefully designed to make end-of-life conversations easier and engaging for people of all ages, from all walks of life. Buy it now and you'll receive 20% off!
• Eat cake, discuss demise. Death Cafes combine open conversation with delicious food and drink. An international phenomenon, use our Death Cafe Cheat Sheet to host your own!

Read: An Attempt to Redesign Death

With the help of friends like BJ Miller, leading design firm Ideo attempts to 'make dying more like living'.

Be Inspired: Ann Neumann Writes about the Magic that Hospice Volunteers Weave

New York Times blog The End features Their Dying Wishes by Ann Neumann, whose forthcoming book titled 'The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America', will be published by Beacon Press in January 2016.

Read: Why End-of-Life Healthcare in America Needs to be Overhauled

Dr. Angelo E. Volandes's article on the Kevin MD blog powerfully examines how End-of-Life care in America is broken at every level.

We live in a city with some of the best hospitals in the world, the “Wall Street” of American health care. I work in one of the best hospitals on earth, and I’ve watched patients die in ways that are protracted, dehumanizing, and far more painful than they needed to be.

Be Inspired: Julienne Grey describes her mother's final days, and how her legacy lives on.

In The End, the New York Times series devoted to end-of-life issues, Julienne Grey writes about the unbreakable bond between mother and daughter in My Mother is Not a Bird.

Be Inspired: Grappling with Mortality, Finding Meaning

Renowned neurosurgeon and writer Paul Kalanithi passed away on March 9,  2015. His article Before I Go warmly weaves together the human and medical perspectives on end-of-life and the passage of time.

Read: Students at University of New England learn firsthand about hospice

The Portland Press Herald reports on UNE's successful hospice immersion project, which gives med students rare insight into end-of-life.

Measure what Matters in Hospice and Palliative Care Medicine

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association have released the results of a joint project, called 'Measuring What Matters', which identifies the top 10 Measures of Quality Palliative and Hospice Care.

Read: A Human Look at Healthcare Costs and Options

Ian Morrison presents a warm and candid examination of Health Care Costs and Choices in the Last Years of Life on the Hospitals and Health Networks website.

View: Life, death, medicine, and what matters most in the end.

Being Mortal: Atul Gawande on PBS's Frontline

Read: Study shows that patients are not made anxious by discussing end-of-life decisions with their doctors

Reuters looks at the results of a study from Penn State College of Medicine that has determined that discussions about end-of-life planning does not make cancer patients feel hopeless or anxious. Doctors used an interactive online program called Making Your Wishes Known to help patients with their end-of-life decisions.

View: Who's using hospice the most in America?

Jenny Ye, Noah Veltman, Louise Ma / WNYC Data News Team. Follow us @datanews, email us here.

NPR has provided an interactive map of rates of hospice use according to each state, as part of an article exploring why NY state's hospice use is lagging behind the rest of the country. 

Read: The danger of financial incentives in hospice

The Washington Post explores how the drive for profits is shaping end-of-life care in America.

Listen: End-of-Life counseling becomes law

WBUR's CommonHealth examines the new law requiring doctors in MA to provide end-of-life counseling for their patients.

Read: Wearable tech and the future of healthcare in England

Already, wearable technology is playing a critical role in UK Healthcare, according to this article in The Guardian. Is this something doctors in the US want to consider? 

Listen: Hospice is more than care

NHPR's Giving Matters program explores how organizations like Lake Sunapee Region VNA & Hospice provide more thanend-of-life care.

Listen: Ellen Goodman and Atul Gawande talk about end-of-life

NPR's Radio Boston features Ellen Goodman, co-founder of The Conversation Project, and TCP advisor Dr. Atul Gawande discussing how to talk to loved ones about end-of-life care.