Defining Palliative Care: It’s Not Hospice Light

By Maureen Kelleher RN, MBA Senior Manager

Palliative Care is the care of patients with serious illness who have symptoms throughout the illness, not just at life’s end, and is provided while the patient is also receiving curative treatments for the illness.

The goal of incorporating Palliative Care into the health system is to improve the symptoms of an illness or side effects of the treatments, thus enhancing a patient’s quality of life. It is also to provide an open communication with patients and families regarding goals of care and advance directives. Palliative Care involvement early in disease treatment could assist home health providers in reducing hospital admissions, which will be monitored more closely as 35% of a Home Health Value-Based Purchasing score will come from hospital claims.

In short, Palliative Care is the safety net for patients as they traverse the medical journey of their illness until such time that the illness is either cured or the treatments are no longer beneficial and life expectancy is considered to be less than six months.

Multiple models of care

Why is Palliative Care so different depending upon who is paying for it, who is providing the care, or who is regulating it?

When Palliative Care became a separate care line, there was no supportive structure for providers or payers. The term Palliative Care was being confused with Hospice because Hospice has always provided Palliative Care or symptom management. A different name may have resolved some of this confusion. Palliative Care also encompasses transitional care, chronic care management, advanced illness management, and many other models of care. Agencies continue to believe there is little to no reimbursement for these services and fear they will not be able to maintain a program. There are also several Palliative Care staffing models being used, which causes even more concern regarding financing a program.