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Home on the range: plans and providers team up to bring palliative care to rural Californians
Home on the range: plans and providers team up to bring palliative care to rural Californians
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Kerr, Kathleen, author
Parrish, Monique, author
Ceronsky, Lyn, author - Contributor(s):
- California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Oakland, California] : California Health Care Foundation, May 2020
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Palliative Care
Rural Health Services
Rural Population
California
United States - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- The well-documented benefits of palliative care for people with serious illness have led to a proliferation of specialty palliative care programs operating in acute care hospitals in California and nationally. In recent years, there has been increasing focus on providing access to palliative care in patient homes, clinics, and physician offices--referred to as community-based palliative care (CBPC). In addition to improving alignment between patient goals/preferences and the care they receive, CBPC has been shown to improve symptom control and to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and total costs of care. Many health insurance plans in California have incorporated coverage for CBPC into their products, including some commercial and Medicare Advantage plans and all Medi-Cal (Medicaid) managed care plans, which have been required to ensure access to palliative care for eligible, seriously ill Medi-Cal enrollees since January 2018. As the demand for palliative care has expanded into California's immense and disparate rural areas, health plans and providers have faced a fundamental challenge unique to sparsely populated spaces: designing and sustaining programs that will serve relatively few people who have intensive and complex needs, who are spread across huge geographies that tend to lack health care resources generally, and where there is a shortage of palliative care providers specifically. Seeking strategies for providing palliative care (particularly CBPC) in rural areas, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) sponsored a two-year initiative in 2017. Five partnerships--each including at least one organization providing palliative care and one health plan--developed or expanded contracts to deliver palliative care in a rural community. (See the appendix for information on the participants.) These partnerships received small grants and technical assistance delivered through in-person meetings, webinars, clinical and programmatic coaching support, and participation in a yearlong Center to Advance Palliative Care Payment Accelerator Program. This report describes key lessons from the CHCF rural palliative care initiative, which are intended to help health plans and providers understand the challenges and consider possible solutions to support delivery of palliative care in rural areas.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (12 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101771874 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101771874