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Palliative Care New Year’s Resolution & Health Reform

December 30, 2011 | Author

In this New Year I think it is important for palliative care teams to become more aware of their potential role in the various new efforts brought forth by health care reform. Health care reform offers new, potential opportunities for palliative care to demonstrate the value of caring for the whole person and their family. The health care reform law– the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes a number of provisions that provide meaningful opportunities to highlight the role of palliative care.
The law promotes new models of care that identify the patient as a key partner and enhances opportunities for coordinated care; both key elements of palliative care. A wide range of opportunities exist to promote palliative care, from Section 3022, Medicare Shared Savings Program (Accountable Care Organizations) to Section 3026, Community-Based Care Transition Program, and the potential 15 Hospice Concurrent Care demonstrations. Palliative care extends the principles of hospice care to a broader population that could benefit from receiving this type of care earlier in their illness or disease process. The social worker on the teams have expertise in analyzing, influencing and implementing policy change and development at local, state, and federal levels. Let’s make a New Year resolution to make sure that palliative care teams are at the table in 2012 to make sure that important improvements in care of patients living with life-limiting illness are considered as these new models are implemented!

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Posted in Advocacy, Health Policy
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    The social worker on the teams have expertise in analyzing, influencing
    and implementing policy change and development at local, state, and
    federal levels.

  • Gerard Anderson

    I hope this is one new years resolution that we can all keep

  • Anne Wilkinson

    I think this is a very important issue and one that needs to be on every developed nation’s policy agenda.  Even in Countries like Australia, palliative care, by being so entrenched in the hospital system, is becoming an accepted but not seen as important policy issue.  I also think it is important to recognize the growing divide between traditional community-based hospice and the emerging medical subspecialization of palliative care.  Each has a role to play in the long-term end-of-life trajectory of advanced illness patients but they tend to be blurred on the policy and public information level.

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