More states are expanding coverage of palliative care outside of hospital settings, giving millions of people access to supportive care that can ease symptoms of life-threatening conditions.
Several states have expanded benefits to adult Medicaid beneficiaries who have months or years left to live, found a report released Tuesday by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline news service. Others now require providers to tell patients when palliative care could be beneficial.
Increasingly, palliative care is moving out of traditional hospice settings, where it is intended to support those whose life expectancy is six months or less.
“It is an emerging hot topic,” Stacie Sinclair, senior policy manager at the Center to Advance Palliative Care at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai told Pew. “Policymakers are getting more sophisticated, but public awareness is one of the first issues states will have to tackle.”
A report from the National Academy for State Health Policy revealed that most states still grouped palliative care under hospice regulations.
But Pew reported that Colorado, Maryland and New York now license palliative care under other healthcare facilities, and Texas regulates it in community settings.
