NHPCO NewsLine Winter 2020 - 9

data sharing (a decrease from 57 percent in 2018).
Of those that do, 31 percent participate in the CAPC
Data Registry; 9.5 percent participate in the new
Palliative Care Quality Collaborative; 8 percent
participate in the Palliative Care Quality Network
(PCQN); and 2 percent participates in the Global
Health Partners QDACT. Types of metrics tracked
include operational (117), utilization (83), patient
experience/satisfaction (83), clinical (73), process
(73) and financial metrics (64).

State Advocacy Activity
State palliative care legislative activity is important
to increase awareness, access, and reimbursement.
As leaders in the provision of community-based
palliative care services, hospice agencies should
engage in these activities. Most programs (108) are
active in their state association; however, a large
number (105) do not participate in state palliative
care activities. Of those that do participate in state
activities: 53 are active in their state palliative care
coalition; 42 participate in Medicaid policy/
reimbursement activity; and 27 are active in
regulation/licensure revision. Note: The largest
number of respondents was from the state of
California (49) where SB 1004 required a palliative
care benefit for all MediCal beneficiaries by January
of 2018 and SB 294 allows hospices to participate in
the provision of palliative services to MediCal
beneficiaries. (The number of 2018 survey
participants from CA was 26).

Greatest Challenges
The greatest challenge and barrier identified by
respondents is referral management: referring
providers not understanding of palliative care (147),
a lack of patients/families understanding of
palliative care (129) and obtaining appropriate and
adequate volume of referrals (114).
Revenue management is the second greatest
challenge: contracting with payers (139), Medicare B
billing and coding (137), and collaborating/
contracting with ACOs and MSSPs (103).

Staff management was identified as the third
greatest challenge: recruitment and retention (68),
productivity (67), and training and certification (52).
Organization buy-in ranked 4th: buy-in from field
staff in other programs (64), buy-in from other
providers in the organization (61), and buy-in from
the C-suite (19).
Other challenges identified were measurement/
metrics to demonstrate value (93) and
documentation (53).

NHPCO Support
Participants were asked how NHPCO can assist
them in development and sustainability of palliative
care services. The top area for assistance was:
Engaging and contracting with payers (159);
followed by data collection, analysis, metrics, and
benchmarking (142).
Other top areas of need include sample documents
(139); advocacy at the Federal level (132) and the
state level (130); referring provider outreach and
marketing (130); staff training and competencies

Do you provide formal palliative care
services separate and distinct from
hospice services?

In wh
pallia

Yes

Assiste

Patien

225

Long t

Considering or in the process of developing
77

Hospit

No and no plans to develop palliative care services
22

Other

Clinic

How
patie

Percent of Respondents Providing
Palliative Care Services

< 1 yea

2020

1-2 yea

69%

3-5 yea

2018

> 5 yea

53%

Are you part of a multi-site
organization?

Newsline / Winter 2020

Yes

Num
9

2020
2018
NHPCO NewsLine Winter 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NHPCO NewsLine Winter 2020
