A group of seven nonprofit hospices has launched a palliative care organization branded as Integrity Care Partners.
The founding organizations are each members of the Texas Nonprofit Hospice Alliance, a regional collaborative of which Integrity Care Partners is an extension. The partnerships’ seven initial members include Community Healthcare of Texas, Hospice Austin, Home Hospice of Grayson County, the Hospice of East Texas, Hospice of El Paso, Hospice in the Pines and Hospice of Wichita Falls.
Together, they will offer palliative care across 73 Texas counties, with plans for future expansion. A second phase will likely launch towards the end of the year that will bring more Texas Nonprofit Hospice Alliance members into the partnership. This could involve entry into other states, such as Arkansas.
“We’ve seen a real gap in the care that’s available between the care that the patient is getting from their primary care or specialist physicians and when they get to hospice. They’re not hospice appropriate, maybe they won’t be for many years, but they have symptoms that they need help managing,” Kirsti Krejs, executive director of Integrity Care Partners, told Palliative Care News. “Right now, there is just not enough support for patients who are managing serious illnesses and have a lot of symptom burden. So these are folks who are ending up in the emergency room in the middle of the night. They end up back in the hospital, when that really is avoidable if they are getting the care that they need in their home.”
The palliative care program works on a medical model that is led by physicians and nurse practitioners who do home visits, and other services such as social workers and chaplains available as needed, based on the patient’s care plan, according to Krejs. The program also offers after-hours triage services that can advise patients and families on how to address emergent issues after hours.
The partnership will allow its members to bargain collectively with payers and establish a uniform care model across its seven-organization footprint. Each of those providers was in various stages of developing their individual palliative care programs, including some that were up and running.
By joining forces, they can share resources and best practices, provide care through a consistent model and engage their collective bargaining power in negotiations with payers.
Integrity Care Partners expects to work with a diverse payer mix that would go beyond Medicare populations. Sources of reimbursement will include Medicare Advantage, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) arrangements. They are also looking beyond the Medicare population to serve younger, seriously ill patients covered through private insurance.
“One of the big things that we wanted to do was to be able to go and collectively bargain with Medicare Advantage plans and ACOs. Here’s an organization that can cover a large span of territory that could meet your needs,” Community Healthcare of Texas CEO Viki Jingle told Palliative Care News. “As Integrity Care Partners, we can go to the players to the Medicare Advantage plans, to the ACOs and say, ‘Here’s the territory that we can cover, which is a large territory, and we’re going to be bringing a consistent care model.’”
