The term “personalized medicine” is often used to describe health needs based on a patient’s genetics. However, more stakeholders are applying the term to palliative care.

Personalized medicine is a step away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to health care. The model uses information gathered from a patient’s genome to plan for care, treatment and services, and to some extent, predict a likely health trajectory, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

But some argue that palliative care — which focuses heavily on patients’ own wishes and goals — is a form of personalized medicine, Dr. Bill Logan, national medical director and chief medical officer for Carelon Health, a subsidiary of Elevance Health (NYSE: ELV), said at the Hospice News Palliative Care Conference in Tampa, Florida.

“Every single individual is impacted somewhat differently by their disease processes. We can personalize people right down to their genome. Unfortunately, that gives you a genotype of that individual, but it doesn’t give you their phenotype,” Logan told Palliative Care News. “Palliative care is a specialty that is specifically focused on mitigating suffering, and suffering can literally be from any aspect of that person’s life journey, or health care journey. This is the part that involves a human sitting in front of another human gathering information, getting to know that individual and planning an approach to that person’s health care journey that fits them specifically.”

Carelon was formerly known as CareMore Health and Aspire Health, and the company is the largest provider of community-based palliative care in the United States, in addition to other services. Last year Carelon served over 22,000 patients in 42 states and more than 100,000 since its inception. By payer mix, the company services populations covered through Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.

The company’s care model includes an interdisciplinary team consisting of board-certified palliative care physicians, advanced practice nurses, social workers, care management registered nurses and a triage hotline.

“Palliative care trained nurses man that triage line, and the reason that’s important is because if one of my patients called into your average primary care shop and started describing some of the symptoms, they get told to go to the ER,” Logan said. “Having palliative care nurses be on the phone and being able to access our EMR, know all of the assessments that have been put in for the patient, delve into that and really counsel that patient out of a place of knowledge is very powerful.”

Carelon uses proprietary AI tools to identify patients in need of care through analysis of claims data, Logan said. This enables their clinicians to engage with patients and come into their homes.

However, barriers exist, and the chief among them may be the generally poor understanding of palliative care among the public. For one, these services are also conflated with hospice care. This requires a good deal of education for patients and families.

“One of the biggest challenges still is having those folks accept something that’s called ‘palliative care,’ and I have worked a lot with our outreach teams to make sure that they have scripts that help work through that,” Logan said. “We want folks to understand that we don’t think that we think they’re going to die, particularly younger individuals who are closer to that initial point of diagnosis.”