The Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) and The John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF) have published a report, From Metrics to Momentum: Accelerating the Spread of Community-Based Palliative Care, drawing on a September 2025 national convening of clinical, policy, payer, and delivery system leaders. The report itself found that while palliative care capacity has expanded significantly within inpatient settings over the past decade, the field lacks comparable infrastructure, data, and reimbursement pathways to support consistent access in community-based environments such as home health, nursing homes, PACE programs, and primary care. The report identified fragmented measurement, limited visibility into patient eligibility and service delivery through claims or EHRs, and the absence of a national inventory of community-based providers as key barriers to scaling access outside the hospital setting. These gaps have persisted despite growing evidence that these models improve quality of life, reduce caregiver burden, and, in some cases, decrease total medical costs and avoidable hospitalizations.
To address these gaps, C-TAC & JAHF outlined a three-part strategy focused on establishing standardized approaches to measuring palliative care access across community settings. Specifically, the organizations recommended advancing state Medicaid benefit design that offers a palliative benefit, while leveraging federal policy levers – including Medicare FFS care management codes and CMS Innovation Center (CMMI) demonstrations – to create sustainable reimbursement pathways capable of accelerating national adoption of community-based palliative care models
Read the Report
