Policy Issue: Concurrent Care
Our Position
Innovation in serious illness care delivery and payment is one of our top policy priorities. We must make meaningful benefit improvements to increase access and advance health equity. One of the best possible paths forward to achieve this is to avoid putting patients in hospice care in the position of having to make “the terrible choice” between continuing disease-specific therapies and accessing person-centered, interdisciplinary care services offered by hospice providers.
Current Legislation
- S. 1845: Expanding Access to Palliative Care Act: This legislation would direct the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to create a Community-Based Palliative Care model demonstration which would test the impact of offering palliative care concurrently with cure-focused treatment.
Previous Legislation
- 117th Congress (2021-2022): S. 2565: Expanding Access to Palliative Care Act: This legislation would direct the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to create a Community-Based Palliative Care model demonstration which would test the impact of offering palliative care concurrently with cure-focused treatment.
Activities
- October, 2023: Comments in response to Request for Information from the House Budget Committee titled “Solutions to Improve Outcomes and Reduce Federal Health Care Spending in the Budget.” Comments discussed the potential for community-based palliative care to reduce Medicare spending.
- June, 2023: Priority Issue at Hospice Action Week in Washington, D.C.
- June, 2022: Priority Issue at the MyHospice Ambassador Hill Day in Washington, D.C.
- October, 2021: Policy Priority and Action Alert for Fall, 2021.
- July, 2021: Priority Issue at the Virtual Hill Day.
- February, 2021: Priority Issue in blog highlighting the hospice policy and advocacy landscape for the incoming Congress.
- May, 2020: Priority Issue in hospice policy and advocacy update.