The first 100 days of the Trump Administration and 119th Congress offer a pivotal opportunity to enact bold policies that improve the quality of care for individuals with serious illness while reducing overall healthcare costs. By addressing key policy priorities, we can create a healthcare system that delivers better outcomes for patients and families.
C-TAC calls on policymakers to act now to advance solutions in the following areas:
Access:
- Advocate for targeted funding to bridge gaps between medical care and social services.
- Expand coverage for advance care planning (ACP) and integrate social workers into care teams to facilitate these conversations.
- Strengthen partnerships with community-based organizations to address health disparities and focus on local needs.
Innovation:
- Modernize Medicare payment models to incentivize person-centered, outcomes-based care.
- Create reimbursement pathways that support interdisciplinary care teams and address the financial burdens on family caregivers.
- Promote innovative service delivery models that prioritize comprehensive, high-quality care.
Preference:
- Expand access to advance care planning to ensure care preferences are understood and honored.
- Empower individuals and families to choose care that aligns with their values and needs.
- Eliminate cost-sharing barriers for ACP services to increase utilization.
Quality:
- Modernize hospice and palliative care policies, including addressing the six-month prognosis rule to promote earlier access to palliative care.
- Enable concurrent care coverage to provide seamless transitions between treatment and supportive services.
- Enhance quality metrics and safeguards to ensure high-quality, compassionate care.
About C-TAC
Established in 2010, The Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving care for the 12 million individuals living with serious illnesses—such as cancer, heart failure, COPD, and Alzheimer’s disease—and their caregivers. Our mission is to advocate for person-centered, high-quality, and equitable care while addressing the financial and emotional burdens these families face. By collaborating with policymakers, healthcare leaders, and advocates, C-TAC works to transform the healthcare system and ensure it meets the needs of those navigating serious illness.
C-TAC’s Core Policy Pillars
Payment Model Reform
C-TAC advocates for payment models that incentivize patient-centered, high-quality, comprehensive care for individuals with serious illness while supporting their family caregivers. Recognizing the broader shift in the healthcare system to accountable payment, our advocacy emphasizes creating reimbursement pathways to support interdisciplinary care teams and palliative care services.
- Initiatives C-TAC supports: CMMI model such as the Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE), the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community (ACO REACH), Kidney Care Choices (KCC) Model and models that focus on patients with serious illness, helping them stay in the community and out of expensive care settings.
Advance Care Planning
Ensuring access to advance care planning (ACP) counseling and advance directives is a cornerstone of C-TAC’s policy agenda. We advocate for increased utilization of ACP to ensure that patients’ and caregivers’ care preferences are understood and honored. C-TAC and our members strongly support the elimination of the patient co-pay for ACP services and enabling social workers to bill for providing ACP. CTAC continues to promote extending telehealth flexibilities, including audio-only services, to ensure access to ACP for individuals who may face barriers to in-person or video-based care.
- Initiatives C-TAC supports: Improving Access to Advanced Care Planning Act (4873 sponsored by Senators Warner and Collins and H.R.8840 sponsored by Representative Blumenauer).
Community-based Services and Supports
C-TAC is committed to bridging the traditionally siloed disciplines of medical care and social services by advocating for targeted funding to aging and disability network services to better support individuals with serious illness in their communities. A key component of this effort is increasing funds for the Older Americans Act, which provides services that support older adults with serious illness. Our efforts prioritize building local partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs). In collaboration with USAging, we are expanding support for those with serious illness. C-TAC also supports initiatives such as Medicaid state plan amendments (SPAs) to enhance palliative care services and deepen engagement with CBOs delivering critical care.
- Initiatives C-TAC supports: Older Americans Act Reauthorization Act (4776) and use of Medicare and Medicaid dollars for less expensive community-based services.
Palliative and Hospice Care
The Medicare hospice program is a success story in our healthcare system. C-TAC is committed to improving program integrity and quality through increased consumer protections, quality assurance, and safeguarding consumer rights. C-TAC supports modernizing hospice benefit to address the limitations of the six-month prognosis rule, in addition to encouraging lawmakers to permanently allow hospices to conduct face-to-face recertification for hospice eligibility via telehealth. Additionally, C-TAC is committed to addressing critical gaps in coverage for pediatric palliative care.
- Initiatives C-TAC supports: Hospice CARE Act (R.9803 sponsored by Representative Blumenauer); Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (S.2243 sponsored by Senator Baldwin).
