A range of medical specialties are incorporating palliative care principles into their care models.
The trend points to ways that patients might receive palliative services through new avenues, such as geriatrics, primary care or home health care.
Through palliative integration, these providers can make their care models more patient-centered, Alex Binder, vice president of Parker Advance Care said at the Hospice News/Palliative Care News Palliative Care Conference in Tampa, Florida.
“I just assumed that’s what medicine was. If you’re taking care of an elderly homebound patient — that you have this level of communication, that you have this discussion. You ask them questions. You develop a care plan that’s in sync with their needs,” Binder said at the conference. “So, just conceptually, when we built our program up off the ground, it had a palliative philosophy built in before we really even knew what palliative medicine was. It was appropriate medicine for that patient population.”
Parker Advanced Care partners with physician practices on a large home-based primary care program and operates a small, standalone consultative palliative practice.
However, the company provides training to clinicians across its business lines in palliative care principles and practices, Binder told Palliative Care News. Clinicians receive close to 20 hours of virtual training from a palliative care physician from the University of California-San Francisco.
The biggest barrier to achieving more widespread palliative care integration is the lack of a clear definition of that term, a lagging reimbursement system and fragmentation in the health care system, according to Tiffany Hughes, COO of Texas-headquartered palliative care provider PalliCare Inc. The company is also partnering with physician practices and geriatricians.
“It’s ‘palliative care,’ but I like to call it ‘practical care’ and the patient population needs that type of care,” Hughes said at the conference. “Everything is so fragmented now, and this is an opportunity to bring that type of care, that philosophy, back into the health care system.”