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VA Study Finds 95% Increase in Palliative Care Utilization When Patients Have Access to Social Workers

Hospice News

Patients are more likely to receive palliative care if they can access social workers through their primary care providers, Veterans Health Administration (VA) research has found. These findings suggest that social workers may increase access to and/or use of palliative care.”.

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Hospices Stepping Up Performance on Visits-in-Last-Days-of-Life Measure

Hospice News

Hospices, in aggregate, are showing improvement on the quality measure for visits in the last days of life. The number of registered nurse and social worker visits during a patient’s final week is one of the seven quality measures that CMS uses to evaluate providers. CMS introduced SIA in 2016. A recent analysis by St.

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Systematic Change Needed to Support Family Caregivers of Hospice Patients

Hospice News

Given the critical role of family caregivers in home-based care, hospices have a vested interest in expanding their access to support. And while hospices offer social workers and spiritual care, many families continue to have unmet needs that could impede some patients’ access to hospice.

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Facility-Bound Hospice Patients Less Likely to Get SIA Visits

Hospice News

Hospice providers in facility-based settings may be underutilizing Medicare’s service intensity add-on (SIA). Researchers analyzed 2020 claims data to identify associations between SIA utilization and hospice Medicare beneficiaries’ characteristics such as site of service, level of care and length of stay, among others. fewer minutes.

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How Medicare Budget Neutrality Impacts Hospice Payment

Hospice News

Medicare reimbursement is the lifeblood of hospice providers, and a clear understanding of policies like budget neutrality can help elucidate the payment systems that keep their businesses running. An earlier version of budget neutrality was phased out in 2016. These reductions occur within each service.

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The Case for Integrating Social Determinants Into Palliative Care

Hospice News

The interdisciplinary nature of palliative care, especially the inclusion of social workers, positions palliative care nicely to help to address the myriad needs that people have,” Maxwell told Hospice News. Programs to address social determinants have likewise been found to reduce health care expenditures.

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Hospice Case Manager Workloads Correlate With Longer Stays, Profitability

Hospice News

Careful management of hospice care manager workloads correlates with longer lengths of stay. For many patients length of stay is a week or less, which is too short for them to receive the full benefit of hospice care. Among the hospices that BerryDunn surveyed, 88% of the best performers kept case managers’ workloads between 13 to 18.

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