Home-based palliative care is an untapped business opportunity for many home health and hospice providers in the U.S., but multiple factors continue to hinder near-term scalability.
Data on the availability of home-based palliative care is limited, so it’s difficult to pinpoint just how large the market really is. Experts familiar with the space have previously estimated that about 50% of all counties have access to at least one community-based palliative care program, however, with hospice and home health organizations often being the main service providers.
To dramatically boost access and expand the market, policymakers will need to rethink traditional Medicare benefits and launch new demonstration programs, while simultaneously monitoring the ever-evolving role of Medicare Advantage (MA).
“What needs to happen is a mobilization on the scale of what … created the hospice benefit to begin with, first as a demo in 1978 and then as a benefit actually 40 years ago,” Edo Banach, president of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), said last week at the Hospice News Palliative Care Conference.
Additionally, private investors will need to further support emerging palliative care startups to fuel innovation.
“That is a massive market,” Chris Booker, a partner at Frist Cressey Ventures, said at the event. “And there hasn’t been a lot of innovation for a while in this space.”
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The post Payment ‘Patchwork’ Limiting Near-Term Scalability of Home-Based Palliative Care appeared first on Home Health Care News.
