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The influx of for-profit companies into the hospice field has benefited patients, advocates say, because the commercial companies made big investments in technology, focused on efficiency and made care more accessible. But a Washington Post analysis of hundreds of thousands of U.S. hospice records indicates that, as those companies transformed a movement once dominated by community and religious organizations into a $17 billion industry, patient care suffered along the way. On several key measures, for-profit hospices as a group fall short of those run by nonprofit organizations. (Whoriskey and Keating, 12/26)

Dr. Michael Fratkin is getting a ride to work today from a friend. "It's an old plane. Her name's 'Thumper,' " says pilot Mark Harris, as he revs the engine of the tiny 1957 Cessna 182. Fratkin is an internist and specialist in palliative medicine. He's the guy who comes in when the cancer doctors first deliver a serious diagnosis. He manages medications to control symptoms like pain, nausea and breathlessness. And he helps people manage their fears about dying and make choices about what treatments they're willing — and not willing — to undergo. (Dembosky, 1/3)

California’s frail elderly and disabled residents increasingly are receiving care in their own homes, an arrangement that saves the government money and offers many people a greater sense of comfort and autonomy than life in an institution. Yet caregivers are largely untrained and unsupervised, even when paid by the state, leaving thousands of residents at risk of possible abuse, neglect and poor treatment, a Kaiser Health News investigation found. (Gorman, 1/5)

Donna Giron is frail. She has Crohn’s disease and uses a wheelchair to get around because walking exhausts her. But she doesn’t want to be in the nursing home where she has lived since May. Giron, 65, is looking to rent a small house in the industrial town in the Cleveland suburbs where she grew up. Using federal funds from a special project, thousands of elderly and disabled nursing home residents have been able to move into their own homes in recent years. The experimental project has reached people in 44 states, including more than 5,400 in Ohio. It connects people to the medical and living support they need to move into private homes, so that they can live independently. (Tribble, 1/5)