Originally published at press.humana.com. Humana ranked No. 25 on The Fair360, formerly DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list.
Humana Inc. has begun evaluating a new way of offering hospice services to members of select Medicare Advantage plans in an attempt to provide greater continuity of care, additional transitional services and access to palliative support for patients with advanced illness.
As part of a four-year demonstration created by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Humana’s program is intended to help the company and CMS learn whether hospice services provided within the Part A benefits package of Medicare results in additional innovation, enables a more seamless care continuum and improves quality and timely access to palliative and hospice care. Humana started offering the new benefit on select plans on January 1, 2021, in order to ease care transitions and ensure hospice-eligible patients who need it can receive the full benefits of hospice care.
Humana is offering the hospice benefit to Medicare Advantage (MA) members enrolled in certain MA plans in Atlanta, Cleveland, Denver, the Louisville, KY metro area (including Southern Indiana), and the Richmond-Tidewater region of Virginia. While hundreds of hospice providers are supporting the delivery of the hospice benefit, Humana has contracted with a preferred network of providers that are partnering on the delivery of additional benefits to support members during their hospice care.
“Humana is committed to what we call human care, part of which is simplifying the health care experience for all of our members,” said Susan Diamond, President of Humana’s Home business. “This means removing barriers to the care they need at all stages of their lives and eliminating financial and coverage surprises.”
“Too often, patients electing hospice care do so in the final days or weeks of life, rather than at the start of their eligibility. As a result, they and their families miss an opportunity to take full advantage of a wide range of benefits, including improved access to palliative care and caregiver support, as well as important transitional care services. Our goal is to allow for a single continuous care team, as opposed to the handoffs that typically occur today,” Diamond added.
As it stands now, when a patient with advanced illness who is receiving palliative care elects hospice, they move to a new care team based on the hospice provider selected. Under the demonstration model, Humana hopes to create continuity as members transition from advanced illness to palliative to hospice, ideally with the support of the same care team.
Patients electing hospice under fee-for-service coverage today have to forego all curative, transitional concurrent care, whereas the demonstration allows for transitional care to eliminate such an abrupt end to this care and provide gr