In NPR Piece, Diane Meier Explains Medicare Care Choices Model

For seriously ill Medicare patients, making the choice to receive palliative care is often a difficult one. In order to receive hospice counseling and care, patients often have to make a decision to stop curative treatments for their disease. However, with a new pilot program called Medicare Care Choices Model, the 30,000 patients who will be enrolled in the program will be able to receive hospice care concurrently with potentially curative treatments. Hartford grantee and director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, Dr. Diane Meier, spoke more about the issue to NPR.

For those with serious illnesses, there is often an difficult choice made to forgo curative treatments in turn for hospice or palliative care. Currently, Medicare patients have to agree to stop receiving curative treatments for their disease if they are to receive additional support, counseling, and care provided through hospice benefit.

However, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is lauching a pilot program that may address this dilemma. The Medicare Care Choices Model will allow 30,000 hospice-eligible Medicare patients to enroll in a program that will allow them to concurrently receive hospice benfits as well as potentially curative treatments.

"I think it's a recognition that this forced choice between palliative care and life-prolonging treatment is irrational," Dr. Diane Meier, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care and Hartford grantee, said in an interview with Kaiser Health News recently.

Palliative care is often used improve the quality of life of patients at any stage of illness by treating pain, stresses, and symptoms of serious illnesses. As it stands, the traditional Medicare program only allows patients to receive palliative care treatments if a doctor certifies that a patient has less than six months to live and the patient must in turn reliquish curative treatments for their illness.

"It makes sense," says Dr. Meier. "People aren't in excruciating pain; they're not depressed. And if, very importantly, people are able to avoid the very real risks of hospitals, it's no surprise that they live longer. My prediction is that it will actually be less expensive to provide both approaches at the same time," she says, "precisely because it will lead to less need for costly emergency and crisis care."

Read the full article on NPR here.

To learn more about the program, head over to the CMS website.