POSTED ON MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2020 12:51 PM
Many Medicare Advantage health plans are offering home- and community-based palliative care as a supplemental benefit, a much-needed benefit to further growth for hospices offering services to patients who need it.
ATI Advisory did a survey that said 61 health plans nationwide are offering in-home palliative care as a benefit. This is up from 29 in 2019. As of now, 455,000 beneficiaries are enrolled in these plans.
Center to Advance Palliative Care says the number of providers that are diversifying their services lines to include palliative care continues to increase, Hospices are providing close to 50% of palliative care according to the Center to Advance Palliative Care.
“Health plans were able to provide this as a benefit beginning in 2019 — so we only have two years of information at this point — but what we’ve seen is definitely an increase,” Tyler Cromer, principal at ATI Advisory, told Hospice News. “We’re definitely seeing some growth, but it’s only two data points. We don’t want to be too presumptive and draw conclusions about what might happen in 2021, but we are hoping it is indicative of a trend that plans are more interested in offering supplemental benefits that have the potential to really improve the quality of care for their beneficiaries.”
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