Palliative Care News spoke with a group of industry leaders about the most pressing market forces and trends that will shape the space during 2025.
Their comments carried some common threads, including further movement towards value-based care, a need to secure payment through business-to-business partnerships, a need for more concurrent curative and hospice care, and a continued status quo of insufficient reimbursement. They also spoke about the need for greater integration of palliative care into the larger health care continuum.
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I think we’ll continue to see a lot of conversation and grappling with what palliative care will become in the value-based world. Most agree there is much opportunity to do more than advance positive outcomes, and I expect to see more payment arrangements in palliative care and an ongoing robust discussion.
– Jason Parsons, CEO, Blue Ridge Hospice
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It is encouraging that [Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-Oregon)] proposal for reform incorporated both payment for some types of palliative care, and aspects of [the Medicare Care Choices Model] that allowed some care and support prior to hospice election.
It’s complicated because there are so many treatments and interventions that are considered palliative. Defining those, the appropriate time span for offering them, and how to pay for them as part of the hospice medicare benefit is complex. Palliative as part of hospice care is part of modernization of the benefit and will improve access overall.
– Susan Ponder-Stansel, CEO, Alivia Care
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We continue to remain hopeful that CMS and the payor community will work to develop and define an effective reimbursement model that is so desperately needed. Pre-end-of-life palliative care is a large gap in the care continuum. Perhaps the new administration will reinstate the Seriously Ill Population program that was terminated immediately prior to launch in 2021. Sadly, we believe that meaningful change in palliative care creating consistency and increased adoption remains several years away.
– Heath Bartness, CEO, St. Croix Hospice
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This is a somewhat frustrating issue for the industry. All of the data suggest the immense value of the application of palliative care, yet I see program after program operating at a loss. The payment programs that are being created are clearly insufficient.
As an industry we continue to put the patient first and attempt to create a program that “has minimal detrimental financial impact to the provider.” Given the savings that it creates for communities and payors, why is this continuing to happen? My prediction for 2025 is that we will continue to educate on this significant avenue of care but will struggle to find sustainable solutions until a more comprehensive payment structure is created.
– David Jackson, CEO, Choice Health at Home
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Palliative and hospice is going to be left to prove which models really work through business-to-business partnerships. It’s unfortunate, because when you see the quality and elevated outcomes and the total cost of a care reduction, when you have an in-depth transitional program that includes aspects of palliative care that complement and lead into hospice care, it’s a beautiful thing.
When you think about it from a funding standpoint, from a federal standpoint, particularly now, where every dollar appropriately will be scrutinized. VITAS, as a provider of a lot of palliative care out in the communities, is just going to have to continue to march forward in business-to-business partnerships that have proven outcomes that then we can take up to [Washington D.C.] and discuss the pros and cons of advocating for something at a broader level.
–Nick Westfall, chairman and CEO, VITAS Healthcare