Ways to say thank you to a hospice team

Pass on the family's thanks

The thanks that mean most to a hospice team come from the family. Many families want to thank the nurse, aide, social worker or chaplain and do not know how to reach them.

• Keep a few plain thank-you cards at the arrangement conference. If a family mentions the hospice team, offer one, and offer to deliver it.
• Ask the family's permission before you pass anything on, and pass it on as they wrote it.
• Deliver the card or note to the hospice office, addressed to the people the family named, or to the team.
• A family's own note is their gratitude, not a gift from your funeral home.

Small, everyday thank-yous

• A handwritten note or a call after a death the hospice coordinated well: what went right, and who made it easy.
• Holiday cards to the team.
• Flowers or a modest treat for the team room after a hard week, offered to everyone, not to the people who send you the most families.
• Recognition during National Hospice and Palliative Care Month in November, such as a note or a visit. The U.S. Senate designated November 2025 by resolution, and Congress first named November National Hospice Month in 1985.

Ask first. Many hospices have staff gift policies, and some cannot accept food or flowers at all.

Source: [6]

Give your time and knowledge

• Join or help with the hospice's memorial or remembrance service, candle lighting or bereavement events, if it holds them and wants help. A hospice must run an organized bereavement program for families for up to a year after a death.
• Offer short education sessions for staff: what happens after a death, cremation basics, veterans' burial benefits, and how to answer families' questions about arrangements. Offer continuing education credit only if an accrediting body has approved the course.
• Volunteer, if the hospice uses volunteers in roles that fit you, through its normal volunteer process.
• Share plain grief resources the hospice can hand out, with no sales message in them.
• Be the funeral home that answers at 3 a.m. Reliable service is the thank-you that matters most to a nurse waiting with a family.

Source: [7]

The limits that keep thank-yous clean

Hospices bill Medicare, so the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (42 U.S.C. 1320a-7b(b)) applies to them. It forbids offering or receiving anything of value, in cash or in kind, to induce or reward referrals of Medicare business. OIG says remuneration includes anything of value regardless of amount, and it has warned that gifts and entertainment for referral sources can violate the law if the intent is there. State funeral laws, such as California's, also forbid paying anything of value to get funeral business.

• Keep gifts modest and occasional, and give them to the whole team.
• Never cash or gift cards. OIG treats gift cards as cash equivalents.
• Never tie anything to referrals, to the number of families, or to a promise of business.
• No tickets, meals out or trips for people who can steer families. OIG names sporting events and entertainment for referral sources as a risk.
• Ask about the hospice's gift policy before giving anything.

You may read that OIG allows gifts of $15 per item and $75 a year. That policy is about gifts to Medicare patients, not to referral sources. OIG has set no dollar amount that makes a gift to a referral source safe.

Sources: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [8]