Limited reimbursement opportunities are complicating palliative care providers’ ability to bring their services to seriously ill patients. This problem is often exacerbated in rural areas due to low population density, potentially long travel times to reach patients in remote areas and lack of infrastructure. Karla Weng, senior program manager for the health care quality improvement […]
Lauren Jodi Van Scoy, M.D., director of the Project Talk Communication Lab, is spearheading a project to boost advance care planning among underserved populations in partnership with Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hospice Foundation of America (HFA), and the University of Kentucky. Van Scoy is an associate professor of medicine, humanities and public […]
A rising number of hospice and palliative care providers are establishing home-based primary care service lines in order to engage patients further upstream and to enable participation in new payment models such as Primary Care First and direct contracting. According to Julie Sacks, chief operating officer and newly appointed president of the Illinois-based Home Centered […]
Efforts have been growing among health care providers, payers, advocacy groups and state policymakers to make community-based palliative care more accessible to patients and families. Hospice organizations are extremely well-equipped to provide this care, according to Terri Maxwell, general manager, chief clinical officer and co-founder of Turn-Key Health. Turn-Key Health is a national community-based palliative […]
The health care industry at large is rapidly changing, and this is having a ripple effect on hospice providers. Among the factors driving are massive companies not traditionally associated with health care entering the space, such as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT). Amazon, for example, recently indicated that it was pursuing nationwide expansion […]
South Carolina-headquartered hospice provider Agape Care Group recently moved into Georgia where it will serve 12 counties, marking the company’s first venture outside of its home state of South Carolina. With that de novo under its belt, Agape Care has plans to expand in a number of Southeastern states, primarily through acquisitions. Agape is a […]
Staffing shortages have been weighing heavily on the minds of hospice and palliative care organization leaders in recent years. The hospice and palliative care workforce has been shrinking due to staff retirement, burnout and limited opportunities for specialty training. The United States has 13.35 hospice and palliative care specialists for every 100,000 adults 65 and […]
As the public and clinicians learn more about the benefits of hospice and palliative care, demand is rising to serve patients outside of the senior population that tends to receive the most hospice care. This includes pediatric patients. Florida hospice care provider Trustbridge has seen the number of pediatric patients it serves increase four-to-six fold […]
Christopher Kerr, M.D., CEO and chief medical officer of Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, has been spearheading research that examines the death experience from the perspective of the patient. The research has uncovered previously unrecognized aspects of the dying process, including vivid dreams that feature the patient’s deceased loved ones. A body of work is […]
Geriatrician and palliative care specialist Diane Meier, M.D., founder and executive director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), has been a leading voice in the movement to improve access to palliative care in the United States. She is the author of more than 200 articles and several books and has appeared in numerous […]
