Health Affairs: Can We Increase the Use of Palliative Care in Medicare?

Medicare’s long-standing payment rules, which value procedures over discussion of goals and alleviation of symptoms, has had serious effects on patients, according to a recent blog post from Health Affairs. The piece recommends palliative care as a successful tool to keeping patients both informed and out of the hospital as much as possible. But how can this model of care be paid for?

As part of the new Health Affairs Blog series highlighting serious illness and palliative care, the post describes a community-based, interdisciplinary palliative care model that spans care settings and is being evaluated in a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) demonstration project. It provides some early lessons on how alternative payment models for palliative care might be developed to increase its provision in Medicare. Click here to read this important piece.