Kathy Keough, Director of Government Relations, and Dr. Joel Bauman, Medical Director for VNA Care Hospice & Palliative Care, recently met with Massachusetts Congressional leaders in Washington, DC to advocate on a number of bills before Congress that affect hospice and palliative care. The visits were organized by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
Meetings were held with key health policy staff members in the offices of Senator Edward Markey along with Representatives Nikki Tsongas, Steven Lynch, William Keating and Katherine Clark. Among the bills Ms. Keough and Dr. Bauman discussed were:
- The Patient Choice and Quality Care Act of 2017 (S. 1334/H.R. 2797) – The bill would give patients and families living with advanced and life-limiting illness knowledge and access to the kind of information and services they need. This bipartisan legislation directs the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to conduct a demonstration project on advanced illness coordination services that would allow an interdisciplinary team to provide early palliative care and wrap-around, home-based services to individuals with multiple and complex chronic conditions.
- Medicare Patient Access to Hospice Act (H.R. 1284) – The legislation would allow physician assistants the ability to serve as the attending physician to hospice patients and perform other functions that are otherwise consistent with their scope of practice. The hospice attending physician certifies a patient’s terminal prognosis, directs symptom management, prescribes appropriate treatment, and manages the patient’s plan of care in collaboration with others. The hospice attending physician can be either the patient’s long-standing primary care provider or a hospice provider. Physician assistants, who are licensed, certified health care providers who are explicitly trained in the area of primary care, are currently prohibited from serving as the hospice attending physician.
- Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (S. 693/H.R. 1676) – The bill would establish a program to enable hospice and palliative care physicians to train teams of interdisciplinary healthcare professionals in palliative and hospice care techniques. Additionally, the bill will expand the types of professionals trained to provide hospice care, including nurses and clinical social workers.
- Rural Access to Hospice Act (S. 980/H.R. 1828) – The bill would remove statutory barriers that prevent hospice patients from having their clinician serve as their attending physician during hospice care. The current requirement often results in patients foregoing hospice care when they learn that their primary care provider cannot serve as their attending physician. The bill would allow Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers to receive payment for hospice services.
“Visits with members of our congressional delegation and their staff members are valuable to not only advocate for various bills that are of importance to the hundreds of thousands of patients that we care for, but it is also an opportunity to educate them about the vital work that is being done by Atrius Health and VNA Care Network,” said Ms. Keough.
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