Home health care providers are increasingly recognizing the clinical value of palliative care, despite its tricky payer landscape and relatively low margins. Hospices have a much larger presence in the space, but more home health agencies are showing an interest — including companies that provide both of those services. Close to half of community-based palliative […]

Penn Bay Medical Center is moving forward with plans to evolve its palliative care program. The medical center is an affiliate of the MaineHealth system and began providing hospital-based palliative care two years ago. It has since expanded into community-based serious illness care. The palliative growth was spurred by a two-year pilot project funded by […]

For Center to Advance Palliative Care CEO Brynn Bowman, palliative care represents a fundamental shift in health care delivery as it continues to grow and make an impact on facilities and patients. As a CAPC strategist and recognized leader in palliative care education, Bowman’s work has been instrumental in fostering clinician engagement strategies to equip […]

As services evolve in the palliative care field, providers may be facing tough questions around quality. Quality can be difficult to both define and measure among the varied forms of palliative business and care models currently in use. Currently, no standardized quality measures are in place for palliative care. One of the toughest questions percolating […]

The channels for palliative care payment may be widening as more state legislators recognize growing demand for these services and start to weave them into Medicaid reimbursement. More than 15 states have rolled out bills to direct Medicaid agencies and other state authorities to research the ability to implement a dedicated palliative care benefit or […]

Some in the serious illness space believe that psychedelic-assisted therapy represents a new frontier in palliative care, even though the substances remain illegal at the federal level. In recent years, research into the potential medical uses of psychedelics and ketamine has abounded. The focus to date has been concentrated on three areas: mental health, palliative […]

Most Americans know how they want their end-of-life care to be handled, but roughly 1 in 3 actually document those plans, a recent study indicates. The result often means a patient’s wishes are unknown or unmet. About nine months ago, Cigna Health Insurance entered a partnership with Koda Health to provide a platform for advance […]

Though revenue streams for palliative care are often shallow, these services can generate sustainable growth for providers who can play their cards right with payers. Providers walk a tightrope when it comes to ensuring that their palliative care services are financially sustainable, according to Lynn Spragens, founder and partner of Spragens & Gualtieri-Reed, a North […]

Advance care planning, done effectively, can reduce aggressive treatments as patients near the end of life, recent research has found. Researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Nursing recently conducted a meta-analysis of studies involving more than 33,000 cancer patients to evaluate the relationship between advance care planning and utilization of aggressive […]

Dr. Jennifer Reidy believes that anyone who graduates from medical school should be able to lead effective, compassionate conversations with people with serious illnesses. As the chair of the Massachusetts Medical School Collaborative and an associate professor at UMass Chan Medical School, she is leading an effort to integrate palliative care into the core medical […]