Cancer care provider Daymark Health has come out of the gates with a $11.5 million seed funding round. The company has integrated palliative care into its service model. Investment firms Maverick Ventures and Yosemite led the round with participation from Oncology Ventures. Daymark launched early this year with a payer contract in the Northeast to […]

Risk-based contracts may be the future of palliative care reimbursement as Medicare Advantage continues to ascend. The simple term “value-based care” belies its complexity. The term can refer to any number of payment models that are designed to reduce total cost of care and improve outcomes. While most palliative care remains locked in the fee-for-service […]

Strong staff education and reimbursement are among the keys to successfully integrating social determinants of health within a palliative care program. Screening tools developed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) include five areas of social determinants of health: food and housing insecurity, transportation needs, utility difficulties and interpersonal safety. Supplemental domains […]

Patients with heart failure have multifaceted needs that could be better addressed with stronger palliative care collaborations, recent research has found. Integrating palliative care (PC) services alongside heart failure (HF) management has been associated with improved patient satisfaction and symptom control, as well as more informed decision-making processes throughout the disease trajectory. This according to […]

Providing support and care to seriously ill loved ones comes with myriad difficulties for today’s family caregivers. A new documentary film, “Caregiving,” depicts the most pressing issues among these unpaid caregivers, as well as the historic and novel efforts to address them. “Caregiving” is set to air on local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television stations […]

Yale University’s health system has established a new outpatient palliative care clinic designed for heart failure patients. The clinic is located on the Saint Raphael Campus of Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. Current American College of Cardiology guidelines recommend that patients who have advanced heart failure receive palliative care. The new clinic will allow […]

The wide range of palliative care services available nationwide can present obstacles around consistent quality measurement. Calls are growing louder for a federally established set of standardized palliative guidelines. Capturing real-time quality data is an important part of effectively managing patients’ symptoms and needs, according to Dr. Monisha Pujari, medical director of Georgia-based Longleaf Hospice […]

Financial and logistical challenges can stop the launch of a new palliative care program dead in its tracks. Demonstrating strong quality and cost-saving outcomes is a significant part of building and sustaining these services. Patient data collection play an important role in examining an organization’s potential capacity for a palliative care service line, said Keith […]

Workforce growth and referral relationship development are among the most significant determinants of sustainability and scale in the palliative care space. Opportunities abound for providers with a stronghold on successful payment and retention strategies. Having sufficient staff is key to building a palliative care program, according to Dr. Kerry Moss, palliative care medical director for […]

Program integrity challenges in the organ procurement and transplant space have led to national legislative reform. Palliative care providers are seeking to help families understand and address these issues to ensure goal-concordant care delivery. Palliative care patients and their families navigate a host of legal, medical and logistical considerations when navigating complex organ donation and […]