Hospice Education Gap: The 'Why' Behind the New myHospice Companion App
myHospice Companion Home Screen
The creators of 'myHospice Companion' open up about the education gap and hospice misconceptions that leave families wishing they had started care sooner.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL, UNITED STATES, July 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- For more than two decades, the conversation surrounding hospice care has followed a familiar pattern. Professionals advocate for the support and services hospice provides, yet people and families frequently arrive at the journey overwhelmed and completely unprepared for what lies ahead.
To bridge this critical divide, long-time hospice clinicians from Yellow Leaf Consulting recently launched the myHospice Companion App on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Today, the app’s creators are peeling back the layers on the deeply personal "why" behind the platform's development, aiming to challenge the societal myths that keep families from accessing hospice care when they need it most.
One of the most profound challenges in modern healthcare is how late hospice care is initiated. Too often, families delay the decision because of a prevailing misconception that entering hospice means "giving up." Recently, there has been press around fraudulent hospice programs, further expanding families’ confusion on what services a hospice should be providing. Consequently, a large number of people come onto hospice service and pass away within a very short time, often in days or weeks.
"When care begins in a state of crisis, families are too stressed and overwhelmed to process what is happening," said Jason Kimbrel, PharmD, BCPS, Chief Operating Officer of Yellow Leaf Consulting. "There isn't time to make that memory box, record conversations, document family stories, or take photos. Society moves at such a rapid pace now, and when the time comes and a loved one dies, families often express the same heavy feeling: 'I wish we would have started hospice sooner.'"
What many families do not realize is that data supports a surprising reality: people with many illnesses who choose hospice care actually live longer than those pursuing aggressive treatments. There are many facets why this occurs, but by choosing hospice earlier, families can shift their focus from navigating what may feel like medical chaos to maximizing meaningful time together.
Bridging the Education Gap Right on the Phone
When analyzing this repetitive cycle, the root cause is multifactorial, but it heavily centers on a lack of singular, comprehensive, yet easy-to-understand, accessible education describing what hospice actually does. While pamphlets and books exist, a glaring void persisted in the mobile space for a guide that walks people and families through the entirety of the journey.
In hospice, our goal is to meet families where they are on their journey, so by having the myHospice Companion app sit on a phone's home screen, we are allowing this vital information to be readily available whenever they need it.
Turning Static Information into Active Conversations
Data supports that both families and hospice professionals appreciate the sounding board that artificial intelligence (AI) offers but are concerned with privacy and systems telling them how they should feel. Hospice is deeply emotional and carries the core philosophy of people taking care of people in the community.
What sets the myHospice Companion app apart from traditional material is it focuses on helping to enhance, not replace, that very important human connection around hospice via active learning and empowerment. Rather than just delivering text, we are taking scenarios and weaving questions into the educational chapters and illness guides. Often, families are overwhelmed and don’t even know what to ask, and if they do have questions, they often report feeling uncomfortable voicing those questions. Likewise, hospice professionals want to ask questions, but finding that right balance of earning trust and respect within the family dynamic is hard.
"We designed questions to serve as a direct bridge between the family and their hospice team," said Brent Roddy, PharmD, Chief Strategy Officer of Yellow Leaf Consulting. "By equipping families with the questions to ask their hospice team, families feel validated to ask, sparking richer, deeper conversations earlier and more often with their hospice team members. Better outcomes naturally occur when decisions can be made calmly and early in the process, rather than in moments of crisis."
By putting comprehensive education directly into the hands of the public via major app stores, myHospice Companion aims to reshape how society approaches end-of-life care. Accessible education can now be downloaded instantly, not requiring anyone to create accounts or set up logins. Our goal is that by offering a well-respected, unbiased resource, families and medical providers—even prior to needing or recommending hospice—find value in the app, helping to transform fragmented information and common misconceptions into clear, accessible knowledge needed to approach end-of-life care with confidence.
The myHospice Companion App is available for download on the Apple App Store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android.
To learn more about the app, visit the official website at www.myhospicecompanion.org
Jason Kimbrel, PharmD. BCPS
Yellow Leaf Consulting
+1 561-320-8175
jasonkimbrel@yellowleafconsulting.org
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