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 […]

Patients are more likely to create an advance care plan if they receive nurse-led palliative care services versus those who had standard care alone. Among patients who received palliative services, a recent three-month assessment found significant increases in the number who participated in end-of-life conversations and completed advance care plans, according to research published in […]

The Delaware Valley Accountable Care Organization (ACO) has leveraged a comprehensive, community-based palliative care program developed by its partner Main Line Health to reduce costs of care by $9,000 per eligible patient. Among Delaware Valley’s palliative care recipients, hospital admissions were 50% lower and emergency department visits fell by 35%, generating about $9,000 in savings […]

Homebase Medical, a subsidiary of SCAN Group, is developing a new palliative model to care for some of the Medicare Advantage organization’s most vulnerable beneficiaries. This development comes as SCAN, the parent company of SCAN Health Plan, prepares to combine with fellow nonprofit CareOregon, which has a large Medicaid portfolio. Post-transaction, the combined organization will […]