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A Strategic Path Forward for Hospice & Palliative Care: Ira Byock, Kristi Newport, Brynn Bowman

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Release Date: 11/13/2025

Is Attending to Clinician Distress Our Job? Sara Johnson, Yael Schenker, & Anne Kelly show art Is Attending to Clinician Distress Our Job? Sara Johnson, Yael Schenker, & Anne Kelly

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Have you had one of those consults in which you’re thinking, huh, sounds like the patient’s goals are clear, it’s really that the clinician consulting us disagrees with those goals?  To what extent is it our job as consultants to navigate, manage, or attend to clinician distress?  What happens when that clinician distress leads eventually to conflict between the consulting clinician and the palliative care team? Today our guests Sara Johnson, Yael Schenker, & Anne Kelly discuss these issues, including: A recent paper first authored by Yael asking if attending to clinician...

info_outline Rehab and Death in Skilled Nursing Facilities: Sarguni Singh, Christian Furman, and Lynn Flint show art Rehab and Death in Skilled Nursing Facilities: Sarguni Singh, Christian Furman, and Lynn Flint

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In this week's podcast, we sit down with Drs. Sarguni Singh, Christian Furman, and Lynn Flint, three authors of the recent   The authors dive into the challenges facing seriously ill older adults discharged to Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), where fragmented care transitions, misaligned Medicare policies, and inadequate access to palliative care often result in burdensome hospitalizations and goal-discordant care.  The discussion highlights key barriers in Medicare’s SNF and hospice benefits, including the inability to access concurrent hospice and SNF care, and explores...

info_outline Inflammaging: Brian Andonian, Sara LaHue, Joe Hippensteel show art Inflammaging: Brian Andonian, Sara LaHue, Joe Hippensteel

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Six years ago we had John Newman on GeriPal to talk about (Song choice Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen, perfect selection).  John explained the basics of geroscience, what is it, what are the key theories in geroscience, what is senescence, why people who provide clinical care for older adults should care about geroscience, and potential therapeutics like metformin and rapamycin. Today we bring on three rising stars in Geroscience, Brian Andonian, Sara LaHue, Joe Hippensteel, to talk about one of the key pillars of Geroscience: inflammaging.  We use this terrific paper they...

info_outline The Chaplain and the Doctor: A Podcast with Betty Clark and Jessica Zitter show art The Chaplain and the Doctor: A Podcast with Betty Clark and Jessica Zitter

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In this week’s episode, we delve into the powerful documentary with two extraordinary guests: Betty Clark, the chaplain at the heart of the film, and Dr. Jessica Zitter, the physician and filmmaker who brought this story to the screen.  The film provides a deeply moving look into the ways personal stories and biases shape our interactions in healthcare. Through our conversation with Betty and Jessica, I gained a valuable insight: the narratives we carry within ourselves—whether conscious or unconscious—act as invisible forces that influence how we engage with patients and...

info_outline A Strategic Path Forward for Hospice & Palliative Care: Ira Byock, Kristi Newport, Brynn Bowman show art A Strategic Path Forward for Hospice & Palliative Care: Ira Byock, Kristi Newport, Brynn Bowman

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In June of 2025, hospice and palliative care pioneer Ira Byock . In a nutshell, he expressed concerns that the quality of hospice care in the United States has become highly variable, with disturbing frequency of unethical practices and avaricious owners. He also raised concern that the rapid increase in palliative care program growth during the first two decades of this century has stalled, leaving us with understaffed programs that are often inadequately trained.  Along with Ira, we’ve invited Kristi Newport, a palliative care doctor and Chief Medical Officer of the , and Brynn...

info_outline Palliative Care in Sickle Cell: Craig Blinderman, Stephanie Kiser, Eberechi Nwogu-Onyemkpa show art Palliative Care in Sickle Cell: Craig Blinderman, Stephanie Kiser, Eberechi Nwogu-Onyemkpa

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Today’s topic on palliative care for sickle cell disease may raise eyebrows with some of you.  You might think, wait, now we’re doing sickle cell?  On top of , , and ?  Where does it end?  Do we have staff for all of this? Well I implore you, dear listeners, to keep an open mind and listen to this podcast.  Our guests do a fabulous job of stating the case for palliative care in sickle cell disease, to the point that we ask: why haven’t we been doing this all along? Our guests today are Craig Blinderman, Stephanie Kiser, Eberechi Nwogu-Onyemkpa, three palliative...

info_outline Medical Billing and Coding in Geriatrics: Peter Hollmann, Ken Koncilja, and Audrey Chun show art Medical Billing and Coding in Geriatrics: Peter Hollmann, Ken Koncilja, and Audrey Chun

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Last month, the “Billing Boys”—Chris Jones and Phil Rodgers—joined the GeriPal podcast to . This month, we’re back with part two, shifting the focus to geriatrics. While billing and coding may not be the most exciting topic, they’re essential for ensuring fair reimbursement for the complex care we provide and for supporting the work of our interprofessional teams, many of whom can’t bill directly for their services. When we underbill or leave money on the table, we not only shortchange ourselves but also devalue the critical role of geriatrics in the healthcare system. This time,...

info_outline Rethinking Slow Codes: Gina Piscitello, Parker Crutchfield, Jason Wasserman show art Rethinking Slow Codes: Gina Piscitello, Parker Crutchfield, Jason Wasserman

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

I’m going to begin with a wonderful quote from a recent editorial in by our guests Parker Crutchfield & Jason Wasserman. This quote illustrates the tension between the widely held view in bioethics that slow codes are unethical, and the complexity of real world hospital practice: “Decisive moral positions are easy to come by when sitting in the cheap seats of academic journals, but a troubling ambivalence is naturally characteristic of live dilemmas.” Gina Piscitello, our third guest, recently surveyed doctors, nurses and others at 2 academic medical centers about slow codes. ...

info_outline GeriPal Live! at NPCRC Foley Retreat: Dio Kavalieratos, Prasanna Ananth, Alexi Wright show art GeriPal Live! at NPCRC Foley Retreat: Dio Kavalieratos, Prasanna Ananth, Alexi Wright

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

This is the second GeriPal podcast we’ve recorded live using this format, see this to our prior podcast at the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) meeting in Philadelphia.  Also look for our upcoming podcast recorded live from the . Today we join you from beautiful Banff, Alberta, Canada at the National Palliative Care Research Center () annual Kathleen Foley retreat.  This meeting was bittersweet.  I’ve been fortunate to attend every meeting in one capacity or another since 2006.  The made an enormous impact  on the growth and capacity for palliative care...

info_outline GeriPal Live! at CAPC: Karen Bullock, Kim Curseen, Matt Gonzales show art GeriPal Live! at CAPC: Karen Bullock, Kim Curseen, Matt Gonzales

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Eric and I had the pleasure of doing a GeriPal Live! Podcast as the closing keynote for the recent in Philadelphia PA. For this podcast, we invited 3 guests to each select an article of interest to them, and engage in a discussion about the article, including questions from the CAPC attendees in the audience. Our guests chose the following articles (in the order discussed) Matt Gonzales used AI to select an article by Ravi Parikh on , published in JAMA Network Open, finding 44% in the intervention arm received palliative care consults, vs 8% in the control arm.  We discussed use of AI...

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In June of 2025, hospice and palliative care pioneer Ira Byock published a white paper outlining the urgent challenges facing the field today. In a nutshell, he expressed concerns that the quality of hospice care in the United States has become highly variable, with disturbing frequency of unethical practices and avaricious owners. He also raised concern that the rapid increase in palliative care program growth during the first two decades of this century has stalled, leaving us with understaffed programs that are often inadequately trained. 

Along with Ira, we’ve invited Kristi Newport, a palliative care doctor and Chief Medical Officer of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and Brynn Bowman, Chief Executive Officer of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, to discuss these issues and outline a strategic path forward for the field. 

In particular we talk about Ira’s four-part solution to transform the field and restore its integrity: (1) publishing clear clinical and programmatic standards, (2) making meaningful data publicly available to ensure transparency and accountability, (3) fostering quality-based competition among providers, and (4) embracing the authentic brand of hospice and palliative care—expert care that alleviates suffering and fosters well-being. 

So take a listen and dive a little deeper with these resources, and dont forget, you too can get involved in AAHPM (click here for opportunities):