In fact, oncologists can find solutions for timely, appropriate, high-quality and cost-effective cancer care by considering a partnership with an experienced hospice and palliative care provider like VITAS Healthcare, which has specialized in end-of-life care in South Florida since 1978.

 

To improve the delivery and quality of patient care while controlling healthcare costs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other insurers have created disease-specific care models that incentivize physicians and specialists who meet the new practice guidelines and penalize them on reimbursements if they do not.

 

Cancer is the leading diagnosis for referral to VITAS hospice care. We understand how busy oncologists are, and the constraints and challenges they face in meeting their guidelines and metrics. Partnering with a provider who has operated under similar guidelines and protocols for decades can help oncologists:

• embed innovation into their practices

• improve care coordination

• support the continuity of care that a long-term disease demands

 

A hospice partnership provides cancer specialists with experienced colleagues who are familiar and comfortable with OCM’s emphases on goals-of-care conversations, advance care planning, symptom management, pain relief and the timely introduction of palliative care, as suggested by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

 

VITAS can help oncologists by providing:

• palliative care for patients who want to maintain quality of life, manage side effects and address pain as they undergo chemotherapy and other life-prolonging treatments

• hospice care—with its focus on compassionate care, dignity and quality of life at the end of life—when standard cancer treatments have been exhausted or determined to be ineffective. One of the OCM’s metrics, for example, tracks whether a cancer patient received chemotherapy within 30 days of dying—an indication that palliative/hospice care was not initiated soon enough. VITAS can help oncologists, patients and families with improved prognostication, honest goals-of-care conversations and timely hospice referrals.

 

Hospice partnerships are common throughout the healthcare industry. VITAS has established successful partnerships and relationships with regional and national medical schools, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities and accountable care organizations.

 

Partners value hospice’s expertise with interdisciplinary care teams, care coordination and disease-specific protocols. They appreciate our comfort level with the hard conversations that arise around end-of-life care and the cessation of curative treatments. They take advantage of our continuing education expertise and training capabilities on numerous topics, from end-of-life care for military veterans to wound care, hospice eligibility and advance directives.

 

Partners also value VITAS’ data and our investment in resources that enable us to track and document care protocols, care allocation and outcomes for high-acuity and complex patients.

 

Additionally, hospice’s reliance on an interdisciplinary care team—nurse, aide, physician, social worker, chaplain, bereavement specialist and volunteer—is in line with current interest in patient-centered care and the shift from high-cost, high-intervention facilities to home, where patients prefer to be and where most hospice care is provided.

 

In the home environment, a hospice partner serves as an extra set of eyes and ears on patients for cancer specialists, providing timely feedback, symptom and pain management, and routine monitoring for changes that might signal decline or a need for changes in the care plan.

 

When patients are referred to palliative or hospice care, their oncologists (and primary care physicians) are encouraged to remain involved, both for the expertise and insights they can provide and in recognition of the doctor-patient relationship that has evolved and deepened over months and years.

 

Healthcare is undergoing rapid change, and cancer specialists can pursue innovation by relying on hospice professionals who are both familiar and experienced with the new standards, metrics and guidelines that oncologists are being asked to embrace.