Hospice News
Hospice News is a Chicago-based business publication covering the hospice and palliative care industries. Launched in April 2019 by Aging Media Network as that company's fifth digital publication, it set out to cover what it called the $28 billion business of hospice and palliative care, providing the industry insights, information and analysis that leaders, investors and policymakers need to navigate an evolving business and regulatory landscape. It describes itself as an independent source for breaking news and up-to-date information on the hospice industry, and as the leading source for industry news and information covering the growing business of hospice care.
The publication distributes its coverage through its website, daily emails and a syndicated RSS feed, and has expanded into podcasts, awards, reports and executive recognition programmes. Since July 2023, its parent, Aging Media Network, has been owned by WTWH Media. Its editor for much of its life has been Jim Parker, a Chicago journalist who has covered health care and public policy since 2000.
Launch in 2019
Aging Media Network announced Hospice News on a Tuesday in April 2019 across its network of sites, including Home Health Care News, Skilled Nursing News and Senior Housing News. It was the company's fifth digital publication, joining titles covering senior housing, reverse mortgages, home health and skilled nursing. The launch announcement was explicit about the commercial logic: as demand for hospice continued to grow, a dedicated publication would serve the leaders, investors and policymakers following the sector.
The size figure attached to the launch — a $28 billion business of hospice and palliative care — became part of the publication's identity; its editor's own biographical line long described him as covering the $28 billion business of hospice care. At launch the publication invited readers to subscribe at hospicenews.com, and within its first year it was marketing a media kit to advertisers preparing 2020 budgets, offering branding, thought leadership and lead generation campaigns in front of thousands of professionals in the hospice and palliative care fields.
Publisher and Ownership
Hospice News is owned and operated by Chicago-based Aging Media Network. The company, founded in 2011, publishes Senior Housing News, Reverse Mortgage Daily, Home Health Care News, Skilled Nursing News, Hospice News and Behavioral Health Business, and has described itself as the largest business-to-business media company covering the business of ageing. Hospice News's own contact information places it in downtown Chicago, at 1 S. Dearborn Street.
On 12 July 2023, WTWH Media, a Mountaingate Capital portfolio company, acquired Aging Media Network to establish a leading presence in the healthcare industry. WTWH chief executive Scott McCafferty welcomed the company's expertise in senior care and behavioural health, and Hospice News has since been presented as part of "Aging Media Network, a WTWH Healthcare Company". The change of ownership did not alter the publication's stated mission or its Chicago base.
Coverage and Audience
The publication states that its coverage spans the hospice world specifically, from large, national service providers to independent care companies, and that its news and perspective give industry professionals the information they need to make the best decisions in their day-to-day business operations. Its subject matter is the business of end-of-life care: hospice providers' finances, mergers and acquisitions, referral relationships, staffing, technology, regulation and payment policy, including the Medicare structures on which most hospice revenue depends.
That coverage regularly follows individual companies' transactions and strategies — such as large providers' acquisitions of hospice locations and the expectations attached to them — alongside sector-wide questions, from how hospices should advocate with policymakers for home-based care, a theme voiced by the chief executive of the National Alliance for Care at Home at its inaugural annual meeting, to the cultural visibility of hospice work itself, as in its reporting on hospice nurses becoming authors and social media influencers. Palliative care sits alongside hospice in its remit, and its editor's title expanded to cover the sister title Palliative Care News as well.
Editor and Newsroom
Jim Parker, senior editor of Hospice News and Palliative Care News, is the publication's most visible journalist. His author biography describes a Chicago-based journalist who has covered health care and public policy since 2000. Parker fronted the publication's outlook survey announcements, hosted episodes of its podcast, and authored much of its signature coverage; his byline profile summarised his beat as the $28 billion business of hospice care.
The publication's reporting team has also included reporter Holly Vossel, who hosted podcast conversations with industry figures. Together the newsroom's output mixes breaking business news, interviews with provider executives and regulators, and analysis of survey data — a model shared with its Aging Media sister titles, in which a small specialist staff covers one health care vertical in depth.
Outlook Surveys and Research
Hospice News publishes an annual outlook survey on the state of the hospice industry, conducted in collaboration with Dallas-based Homecare Homebase. The 2021 edition gathered opinions from more than 160 industry professionals, including owners, executive leadership, managers and staff. It found staffing was expected to continue as the industry's greatest challenge, that patient access was the greatest COVID-related challenge after a difficult pandemic year, that technology investment would focus strongly on telehealth and telemedicine, and that assisted living facilities were viewed as an area of growth for hospice services.
The 2023 outlook, surveyed between 28 November and 20 December 2022, found providers planning investment across a range of technologies, led by predictive analytics at 21 percent, staff training technology at 20 percent and patient engagement at 17 percent, with referral growth expected mainly from new physician relationships and hospital systems. Parker commented that providers were meeting their top challenges — staffing shortages and patient care — with a multi-pronged approach combining data, holistic care and user-centred technology, and he noted the continued rise in hospice utilisation and family comfort with the service line as a positive development for the health care system. Homecare Homebase's chief executive, Scott Decker, said the survey reaffirmed the need for a technology partner that improves interoperability and the sharing of clinical data among care teams.
The Elevate Podcast
Hospice News extended its coverage into audio with the Elevate podcast. Episodes featured conversations on the issues its news pages covered: the financial, regulatory and operational impacts of the pandemic nearly three years into the public health emergency; how hospices navigated the shifting regulatory and compliance landscape, with guests including Judi Lund Person of the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization; grief and bereavement care during the pandemic; and organisations working alongside hospices, such as Dreamcatchers, a nonprofit that partners with hospices to help patients fulfil wishes as they near the end of life, and Farewelling, a platform helping families coping with terminal illness plan for end-of-life and bereavement.
Awards and Recognition Programmes
In November 2020, Aging Media Network launched a hospice marketing and advertising award through Hospice News, aiming to raise awareness, showcase the best work in the field and elevate the profile of the industry. The publication's commercial products have likewise included sponsored content — articles of 600 to 750 words labelled as sponsored — a "Voices" sponsored question-and-answer format for executives, and detailed e-books distributed through its resource centre for lead generation.
Its editorial recognition programmes have grown as well. For 2025, Hospice News launched the inaugural Executives to Watch report, inviting submissions from companies in the hospice and palliative care sectors to spotlight executives making the biggest impact on their enterprises and the field, at a moment when, the publication said, hospice must evolve in response to new clinical and financial models, technology and consumer expectations.
Place Among Aging Media Titles
Hospice News was the fifth title in a portfolio built vertical by vertical, and its launch completed a chain covering the main settings in which older Americans receive care and housing: senior housing, home health, skilled nursing and hospice, with behavioural health added alongside. The titles share events, awards such as the Aspect Awards and Frontline Honors, and a common commercial model. When WTWH added further healthcare titles in September 2023, it pointed to the July acquisition of Aging Media — Hospice News's parent — as the foundation of its healthcare presence.
Why It Matters
Hospice occupies a singular place in American health care: a Medicare-funded service built around comfort at the end of life, delivered by a mix of nonprofit and for-profit providers, and used by a growing share of families. A trade publication devoted solely to its business is a recent invention — Hospice News dates only from 2019 — and its existence is itself evidence of the sector's scale and professionalisation. For executives running hospices, investors evaluating them and policymakers overseeing them, it functions as the sector's trade journal of record. Its official website is hospicenews.com.
