Sean Morrison is a palliative care leader and can readily cite the many advantages of palliative care. These include reductions in unnecessary hospital admissions or emergency department visits due to better symptom management, along with reduced spending due to better care coordination.
But while these outcomes improve quality for patients, they decrease revenue for hospitals. Morrison concedes: "Expecting physicians to act against their own financial interests and those of their health systems is not realistic."
Therefore, among other measures, Morrison calls on Medicare to "incentivize physicians and financially reward health care institutions for providing high-quality palliative care." He says CMS "should add measures to its quality reporting programs that capture reductions in symptom burden as a result of palliative care, and pay more to hospitals that meet those standards."
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