A recent study of nursing students providing palliative care in a Thailand-based intensive care unit (ICU) indicates a need to include exposure to these services in medical education and training. Researchers examined the experiences of nine Thai third-year nursing students providing palliative care to terminally ill patients in the ICU who had varying levels of […]

Palliative care providers find themselves in a dilemma. Demand for the service they provide is growing, but that growth is hindered by a lack of industry-wide standards for palliative care. Experts in the field point to a dearth of standards that define exactly what effective palliative care is in the current environment, plus a contract-by-contract […]

Breaking down the payment barriers that impede access to palliative care will take building up a reimbursement structure that more narrowly defines service scope and sets specific parameters for quality. The nation’s fragmented payment structures for palliative care reimbursement create opportunities for regulators to examine the facets of these different models across varied geographic areas […]

Palliative care lacks a standardized definition within current value-based reimbursement systems, making it difficult to determine the full scope of services for seriously ill patients. Palliative care services are intended to address physical, psychosocial, social and spiritual needs of seriously ill individuals. However, the full breadth of interdisciplinary services involved in palliative care has yet […]

A New Jersey state bill that would establish community-based palliative care coverage is advancing in the state’s legislature. The engine behind the bill has been advocacy work by the Goals of Care Coalition of NJ (GOCCNJ), whose lobbying efforts moved state Assemblywoman Angela McKnight, chair of the Assembly Aging & Senior Services Committee, to introduce […]

More cancer patients have been receiving palliative care since the Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid. About 18.9% of eligible patients received palliative care in states that expanded Medicaid, up from 17% before the ACA provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 2014, according to American Cancer Society research recently published in Health Affairs. Among non-expansion states, […]

Evolving demographic and economic forces have placed palliative care among the nation’s fastest growing health care sectors. Interest in the palliative care market has spiked in recent years, partly due to the value proposition these services offer to patients, families, providers and payers alike, according to Fred Bentley, managing director at health care consulting firm […]

Wide variation exists in the ways palliative care is delivered, but Penn Medicine is launching an extensive research project to determine best practices in the hospital setting. A central question in the controlled randomized trial is whether patients would benefit more from expanded access to specialty palliative care versus care from generalists who receive a […]

Pre-operative palliative care consultations for patients undergoing major cancer surgery are unwarranted, new evidence suggests. A recent randomized controlled trial did not support routine integration of specialty palliative care in those cases. Researchers found that the physical and functional quality of life at 90 days was essentially the same for patients who received those consults […]

Palliative care providers have a limited window into the disparities plaguing underserved populations when it comes to access and awareness of their serious illness care options, according to Nicole McCann-Davis, vice president of communications and chief health equity officer at Empassion Health. Palliative Care News recently sat down with McCann-Davis to discuss the scope of […]