The Kidney Care Choices (KCC) model is among the reimbursement streams that is widening payment for palliative care services. It could also help improve utilization of serious illness and end-of-life care. Patients with chronic kidney disease can often receive fragmented care and expensive treatments. They also receive limited to no education about their health trajectories, […]

Strains on reimbursement, referrals and staffing represent the biggest obstacles to palliative care providers’ viability and growth. It takes time to build up the payment, referral and workforce resources needed to support a sustainable palliative care program, according to Dr. Stephen Goldfine, chief medical officer at Samaritan Healthcare & Hospice. The New Jersey-based nonprofit offers […]

Prevalent care models for neurological illnesses could be improved by more extensive integration of palliative care, recent research has found. A team of international researchers reviewed prior studies of care models for treating Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia and other neurological diseases. They found that the development of an evidence-based framework for early and ongoing […]

Palliative care providers face an uphill battle when it comes to communicating and defining the scope of their interdisciplinary services not only to seriously ill patients, but also referring clinicians across the continuum. Misconceptions abound in and around the spheres of serious and terminal illness care. The public and health care providers alike often conflate […]

A new cancer-focused payment model demonstration from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) could create opportunities for palliative care providers. The goals of the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), which went live on July 1, are to improve quality and reduce the cost of cancer care with augmented care coordination. While documents on the […]

This spring, Kansas launched a five-year plan to make palliative care more accessible to its nearly 3 million residents. The seeds of the plan were planted in 2018 when the legislature established the state’s Palliative Care and Quality of Life Interdisciplinary Advisory Council. The group was charged with advising the state Department of Health on […]

Raising philanthropic funding is often vital to nonprofit palliative care providers. But to attract donors, operators must be prepared to communicate their value proposition, according to Steve Cone, chief communications officer at Capital Caring Health. “It’s key to point out that palliative care is better for everybody, the patient, the family and payers,” Cone told […]

When deployed at scale, palliative care can help achieve many of the health care systems current goals, including reduced costs, improved patient satisfaction and quality of life. Despite this potential, existing programs hit barriers created by misconceptions about palliative care among referring physicians, as well as health equity concerns, among others, according to an analysts […]

Collaborations between palliative and primary care providers may be on the rise, a trend that could give way to competitive edges around referral streams. Many patients lack access to palliative care in part due to lagging reimbursement for these services. This is among the reasons driving more palliative care providers to join forces with primary […]

Palliative care patients who receive psychological, emotional and spiritual support are more likely to elect hospice when they become eligible.   Researchers in Israel studied 180 hospitalized cancer patients between November 2018 and March 2020. They found that patients who utilized social worker, psychologist and/or chaplain services chose to forgo aggressive treatments in their final days […]