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The diverse landscape of palliative care services that exists today presents both opportunities and challenges when it comes to defining quality, according to Keith Everett, CEO, ProCare Hospice in Nevada. Calls are growing louder for a federally established set of standardized palliative guidelines.
The pandemic reinforced positive perception of palliative care and increased participants’ understanding of its scope and respondents indicated a need for more palliative care and advocated for their role in future pandemic,” Vesel said in a presentation at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Annual Leadership Conference.
Palliative care providers are taking varied routes to address the most disruptive forces they are encountering this year, rising to challenges that have been persistent across the sector. Martha Twaddle, The Waud Family Medical Directorships palliative medicine and supportive care clinical professor of medicine at Northwestern Medicine.
Most transplant centers require that a caregiver be present and available to patients in order for them to be considered for a transplant, Montoya told Palliative Care News. Family caregiver support is lacking across organ transplant centers nationwide. These are just some of the areas that palliative care teams could help to improve.
It’s not just past, but also present experiences that are still in existence and impact the quality of care that transgender patients receive,” Fried said. Palliative care delivery approaches that are not gender-inclusive can contribute to significant quality issues in caring for transgender populations. Furthermore, 85.3% Furthermore, 85.3%
AI can provide capabilities that provide clinical decision insights through predictive and prescriptive machine learning modeling, it can summarize large swaths of data through Generative AI summarization, and a lot of opportunity is presenting itself in the agentic AI space. This requires careful evaluation.
The earlier a patient receives palliative care, the larger the return on investment, an analysis by the Pennsylvania-based health system WellSpan Health has found. Palliative care is often viewed as a cost center in health care, rather than a revenue generator. There was a 20% lower cost in one of the hospitals. This hospital was at 10%.”
Even when a caregiver is present, that person may be elderly or ill themselves, or unable to be in the home around the clock due to work or other obligations. There’s a very high number of U.S. We as palliative care clinicians meet caregivers who may be particularly vulnerable given the circumstances under which they find themselves.”
Education in palliative care principles for emergency department clinicians could likely improve care for seriously ill patients who present in the ED. Patients with serious illness, even hospice patients, present to the ED in increasing numbers for symptom management.
While they offer an alternative to home-based services, they present their own unique benefits and challenges. First, the clinic-based model presents challenges in its need for physical space and the associated costs. These locations often assist patients by offering a variety of services beyond symptom management.
VNS Health staff, with lead researcher Rutgers University Assistant Professor Elizabeth Luth, presented their findings at the recent International Nurse Informatics Conference. ”We Research by VNS Health has found that generative AI systems can help clinicians better assess and predict patients’ palliative care needs.
Contessa provides nurse practitioner managers, field staff, virtual care clinicians, data and analytics services, marketing and supplies, Dawn Black, clinical manager for palliative care at home at Contessa Health, said in a presentation at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Annual Leadership Conference in Denver.
Too often when an older person is facing an illness, they get swept up in the health care system without being presented the option of noninvasive care. A New Jersey state bill recently passed that establishes community-based palliative care benefits under Medicaid. We get swept up in quantity, not quality of life.”
While some palliative care programs mirror the hospice model, more operators are working to tailor their services to patients’ specific needs, with varying intensity. This is increasingly important as payment shifts towards value-based payment models in which demonstrating cost savings is crucial to success.
Though participants reported that family and social support structures were present, caregiver stress was reported to “create tension between couples,” the researchers stated. Pediatric palliative care providers can sometimes struggle to engage parents and families. Expanding that education and awareness is a pivotal starting point, he added.
Patients with ovarian cancer who have received palliative care had fewer hospital readmissions compared to others, according to a recent study presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer from the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) in Tampa, Florida. The results help to demonstrate palliative care’s value proposition.
It’s not required,” Jillian Sparks, attorney at the OIG’s Industry Guidance Branch, said during a presentation at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Annual Leadership Conference. These are recommendations from the OIG.
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. Case in point, New Jersey legislators are currently mulling a bill that would create a community-based palliative care benefit within the state’s Medicaid program.
The wide breadth of service variety within the scope of palliative care presents another lever moving hospices’ investments in the space, especially in terms of reaching patients upstream, Farrand indicated during the Palliative Care Conference in Washington D.C. We know that palliative care is a growing field. It’s evolving.”
Researchers found that early palliative care via telehealth often improves quality of life for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at a level equivalent to in-person care, according to a study presented at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.
Rami Moustafa Shaarawy recently filed a civil action lawsuit against HHS, CMS and Noridian Healthcare Solutions LLC, seeking to prevent termination of his physician billing privileges following Medicare fraud risk allegations presented by an independent contractor.
In a recent Medscape podcast , Iyer presented a case study involving a 78-year-old male patient with end-stage COPD. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients can benefit from more palliative care referrals. The patient experienced four hospitalizations in the prior year, including two intensive care unit stays.
ED-palliative partnerships present a quadruple aim opportunity to improve care for seriously ill patients.” Patients and clinicians can benefit from having palliative care consults available in hospital emergency departments, though currently few providers have done so. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Operators can also reassess written and other materials to ensure they are appropriate for patients who may have difficulty understanding the information they contain, such as ensuring they are presented at a fourth or fifth grade reading level. In order to even access palliative care, people have to understand what it is.
The shift does present challenges, however. As the hospice landscape shifts and hospice care is delivered more widely, another care type has made entry into the conversation: palliative care. But it’s proving outcomes and it’s making waves.” The story was about an organization that asked for it,” Rose says.
Illinois-headquartered Unity Hospice & Palliative Care has expanded to Houston, Texas, following its acquisition of an existing license in that market. Unity is a family-owned provider established in 1992 that since then has cared for more than 30,000 patients, the company reported. This transaction marks the company’s first entry into Texas.
Our Missing Pieces program prioritizes access to resources and education by providing a centralized hub for support following child loss through direct outreach to families, professional networking for grief specialists, and community presentations,” Matty said.
As health system leaders consider where to invest resources, social workers present a patient-centered approach to increase the use of a service that can improve outcomes and decrease readmissions,” the authors wrote. The average age among the veterans was about 65.
A powerful theme to emerge from these conversations has been Black community members in particular underscoring the importance of having an advocate present in family meetings, Wu said. Now we’re trying to understand how to integrate that into our training and in our workflow so that we’re thinking about that,” he said. “Now
North Carolina-based hospice provider Four Seasons has launched a new mobile palliative care unit to reach patients in remote and rural areas. The mobile clinic will deliver care through six North Carolina counties. It also carries a simulation mannequin for enhanced staff training.
In 2013, CHC won the Global Partnership Award presented for a model partnership that others should look at.” The Indiana-based palliative care provider Center for Hospice Care (CHC) is looking beyond its immediate community and has developed networks that impact palliative care on a global scale. So, these U.S.
The ability to present customer satisfaction scores, attention to HQRP measures and a means for providing quality hospice services in a cost-effective manner directly impacts those plans. I have done everything from bedside nursing to administration, and my last eight years at the agency level were spent as a quality assurance coordinator.
This article is based on a discussion with Anthony Spano, Director of Client Development at Netsmart and Nikki Davis, Vice President of Palliative Care Programs at Contessa Health. The conversation took place on April 20, 2023, during the Hospice News Palliative Care Conference. The article below has been edited for length and clarity.
We were able to fund 13 junior investigators to come to Denver to present research into neuropalliative care.” A huge need exists for neuropalliative care, Dr. Claire J. Creutzfeldt at the Harborview Medical Center’s Department of Neurology told Palliative Care News. But, in addition, stroke leaves people with huge changes in identity.
Patients value stability; caregivers can foster this by maintaining regular routines and being present for important milestones. Caregivers can present options about treatments, daily routines, or activities, keeping the loved ones preferences front and center. It addresses physical, emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
They can use that energy trying to figure it all out to focus on being present. Knowing what they qualify for can lessen that burden, and they can use those resources to do other things. We cannot change their health outcome, but maybe we can impact their journey. How do you anticipate this scope of services to take shape?
Leff is the co-presenter of a 10-hour intensive social worker training program tailored to the hospice and palliative care fields with Terry Altilio, a social work coordinator at New York City’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and editor of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Social Work, second edition.
Adverse drug events (ADEs) present on a spectrum from discomfort to medical emergency, so the impacts can range widely,” Krout told Hospice News in an email. McPherson also serves on the board of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM). Nearly half (45.7%) of these patients had more than one adverse drug event.
Even when a caregiver is present, that person may be elderly or ill themselves, or be unable to be in the home around the clock due to work or other obligations. The nation is in need of a “total overhaul” in terms of how we think about caregiving and its place in the health care system, according to Sonya Dolan and BJ Miller, M.D.,
They need to have a preceptor for that clinician to learn about electronic medical records, managing their own workflows and all those things you need to be present.” A new hospice nursing recruitment effort has launched in the New England region after being stalled by the pandemic. Programs like this are still not universal.
When hospital referral sources experience higher readmission rates, it could present an opportunity for hospice providers or other post-acute agencies to better coordinate care or form a partnership, according to Griffith. Patients who had easy access to primary care providers were also less likely to return to the hospital.
Diversity in population can yield diverse presentations of symptoms,” Kozlov said. Recent research from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey has revealed gaps in hospice referrals and palliative care consultations among underserved patient populations in the state.
Through compassion, medication, education, listening, and just being present, we can alleviate suffering and preserve one’s dignity in their last earthly days.” Traditions Health Names SVP of Hospice Operations Traditions Health has appointed Tom Moreland as its new senior vice president of hospice operations.
The findings were presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium in Boston. Seriously ill patients are more likely to receive palliative care if they have more providers in their vicinity. The researchers then looked at data showing whether or not the patients received palliative treatments.
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