Dive Brief:
-
Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut is developing the Kanarek Center for Palliative & Supportive Nursing Education to help students become more “palliative care-ready."
-
The Kanarek Center will offer a comprehensive curriculum to nursing professionals to help them learn about delivering multidisciplinary care, including pain and symptom management, to patients with life threatening conditions.
- It is likely that demand for palliative care services rises in the near future as the populations continues to age and payers attempt to reign in spending on end-of-life care.
Dive Insight:
Efforts to improve palliative care are on the rise as healthcare attempts to address the cost and quality of end-of-life-care. Around one-quarter of Medicare dollars are spent on beneficiaries in the last year of their life for services including hospitalizations, post-acute care, and hospice, according to recent research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
With an aging population and more money being spent on end-of-life care, there appears to be a shift toward increased utilization of hospice and palliative care. Educational programs like the one being developed at Fairfield University could help to fill demand for providers trained in palliative care. More partnerships between managed care organizations and palliative care providers are already expect in the near future, as Healthcare Dive reported in October.
The usual suspects, payers and medical education programs, are not the only ones showing interest in palliative care services. Google made a bet on palliative care recently when it invested $32 million in Aspire Health, a Nashville, Tennessee-based palliative care provider operating in 19 states that delivers more than 100,000 home-based visits each year.