AAHPM advocates for regulatory changes and payment mechanisms that will ensure the practice of hospice and palliative medicine is sustainable and appropriately recognized for the value it adds to care for patients with serious illness.
The Patient and Caregiver Support for Serious Illness (PACSSI)
As fundamental changes take place in care payment and delivery, AAHPM saw an opportunity to identify gaps in payment and develop strategies to support and encourage the interdisciplinary nature of palliative care teams. In 2016, AAHPM convened an Alternative Payment Model (APM) Task Force, which represented the diversity of palliative care teams serving Medicare beneficiaries across communities. The task force engaged in an open and collaborative effort to identify and address gaps in care for patients with serious illness and craft a payment strategy that would support palliative care teams of different sizes, organizational structures, and geographies in the delivery of effective, high-value care.
The Patient and Caregiver Support for Serious Illness (PACSSI) model emerged from this work as one of two payment reforms developed by the Academy designed to improve care for patients with serious illness. The PACSSI model holds great promise for both improving quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries with serious illness and reducing costs for the Medicare program.
AAHPM’s proposal was reviewed in a public meeting of the Physician-focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), which voted to recommend PACSSI to the Secretary of Health and Human Services for a limited-scale Medicare payment demonstration.
Payment Comment Letters
AAHPM regularly provides comments on various proposed regulations regarding physician payment and other matters to various government agencies to advocate for the practice of hospice and palliative medicine.