Medical Marijuana and Hospice Care: What Hospices Need to Know Now

Dr. Tracey Jane Schossow, B.S. Pharm, Pharm. D., lays out a stepwise, comfort-focused approach to nosebleeds in hospice. It starts with reviewing antithrombotic therapy and moves through nasal pressure, oxymetazoline, cautery, and resorbable packing, with sucralfate and topical TXA as other options. The patient’s goals of care decide each escalation, which keeps care at the bedside whenever possible.

Hospice patients often take several medications that each raise serotonin a little, like opioids, antidepressants, antiemetics, and even over-the-counter cough medicine. Each one is usually safe by itself. Taken together, and with doses going up as symptoms progress, they can push a patient into serotonin syndrome. Its symptoms look a lot like agitation, delirium, or the dying process, so it's easy to miss.

CMS's proposed FY 2027 rule makes the hospice election addendum mandatory on every election. See what changes for relatedness, billing, and your CMS score.

When a hospice patient can no longer take medication by mouth, find the right route fast. A stepwise pathway plus a 58-medication, evidence-tagged reference.

Drug prices are down under the IRA. For hospice, the real impact is financial stability, not formulary expansion.

Anorexia-cachexia syndrome causes appetite loss and muscle wasting in serious illness, driven by inflammation rather than simple hunger. Care focuses on comfort — offering favorite foods, considering medications like dexamethasone or olanzapine when appetite loss is distressing, and gently helping families understand that eating less is a normal part of the body winding down.

A practical look at Journavx and what its early promise, current evidence, and limitations may mean for hospice and palliative care.

Comfort kits are pre-packaged medications kept in the home that allow hospice caregivers to respond immediately to end-of-life symptoms like pain, anxiety, and shortness of breath. By ensuring the right medications are available when symptoms emerge, comfort kits help reduce after-hours costs, emergency visits, and unscheduled nursing calls while improving both care quality and caregiver satisfaction.

Learn when to stop statins in hospice care, including clinical rationale, side effects, and deprescribing guidance to reduce medication burden and improve comfort.

Hospice pharmacy benefits used to feel straightforward: manage a formulary, pay local pharmacies, and get medications to the bedside quickly. But simplicity has given way to PBM incentives that prioritize revenue over urgency, reshaping costs, workflows, and access when hospice care needs to move fast.

Topical ABH and ABHR  have been used for years in hospice and palliative care because they feel simple: apply to the wrist, avoid swallowing, reduce burden on families. But convenience isn’t the same as efficacy.

Hospice leaders across the country are seeing the same thing: PPD is rising even when utilization isn’t.

In late-stage dementia, balancing potential benefits against side effects requires clear communication, shared decision-making, and evidence-based guidance.

Wise Hospice Options is partnering with Buzz by Skyscape to make communication faster, simpler, and more secure for hospice teams.

Managing Wound Odor in Hospice Care — a straightforward guide to what’s actually working in the field, from hypochlorous cleansers to low-cost metronidazole prep.

In hospice care, the benefits of antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapy often diminish as risks rise — bleeding, pill burden, and falls can outweigh prevention.