Monday, October 23

• REGISTRATION opens at 8am
• PRE-SUMMIT SESSIONS from 8:30am-11:30am
• EXHIBITOR ROOM opens at 11:30am
• LUNCH SERVICE begins at 12pm
• SUMMIT KICKS OFF at 1pm
• NETWORKING RECEPTION to follow Closing Keynote from 5:30pm-7pm

 Tuesday, October 24

• BREAKFAST & REGISTRATION opens at 7am
• SUMMIT begins at 8am
• LUNCH will be served
• DAY CONCLUDES at 3:30pm

Monday, October 23, 2023

REGISTRATION opens at 8am

Pre-summit sessions begin at 8:30am:

Fostering Strategic Relationships to Achieve Program Goals                 

New challenges confront palliative care leaders in ways we could not have imagined a few years ago. This workshop will explore the current terrain, including more demand with fewer resources, the need to partner with new entities and build new initiatives, and how to keep leaders and the team afloat. This interactive workshop will combine lessons from seasoned leaders and small-group work amongst participants to identify strategies and potential partnerships to achieve successful, measured program growth.

Lynn Hill Spragens, MBA, Partner, Spragens & Gualtieri-Reed; Consultant, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Jennifer Allen, MD, Chief, Section of Palliative Medicine and Hospice, Lehigh Valley Health Network Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Director, Lehigh Valley Health Network

Sandra P. Gomez, MD FAAHPM, Sage Health Medical Director Provider Training and Care Model Innovation; Board of Directors Bristol Hospice, Board of Directors American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine; CAPC Circles Ambassador

Serious Illness Skill-Building Across an Organization: Education Strategies for All Clinicians                                 

Every health professional that cares for patients living with a serious illness has the opportunity to relieve suffering—and improve quality of life—by managing symptoms, supporting caregivers, and having skilled conversations about their patients’ goals of care. And yet, too often clinicians have not received training in these crucial skills needed in everyday practice. In this workshop attendees will learn how to design an effective online clinical education intervention for non-palliative care clinicians, fill gaps in competency training, hear what’s working (and what’s not) in organizations across the country, and draft their own training strategies.

Brynn Bowman, MPA, Chief Executive Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care Assistant Professor, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Madeline Jacobs, MPA, Senior Member Relationship Manager, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Puneeta Sharma, M.D., MHCM, CPE, Chief Medical Officer, Valley Medical Group

Yusimi Sobrino-Bonilla, MSN, APN, ANP-BC, CCRN, ACHPN, Valley Health System Palliative Care Clinical Supervisor, Advanced Practice Nurse

Lisa Simmons-Fields, DNP, MSA, RN, CCM, CPHQ, Director, System Population Health / Care Management; Trinity Health System Office (HQ)

EXHIBITOR ROOM opens at 11:30am

LUNCH SERVICE begins at Noon

SUMMIT KICKS OFF at 1pm

Opening Keynote: “Transforming Care for People with Serious Illness: A National Commitment”                                   

A global pandemic, a health care workforce shortage, and a national reckoning on racism in the United States and in health care. A lot has changed in recent years. And while the challenges ahead of us are significant, there are reasons for hope—including the diverse group of people invested in improving care quality for patients with serious illness. In this keynote session CAPC and C-TAC leaders will discuss a path forward, focused on spreading innovative care models, addressing workforce reform, and accelerating policy advocacy to support change agents in their efforts to standardize high-quality, equitable care.

Brynn Bowman, MPA, Chief Executive Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care Assistant Professor, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Jon Broyles, Chief Executive Officer, C-TAC

Keynote: The Workforce Caring for People with Serious Illness: What Does the Future Hold?                           

Workforce shortages are pervasive across U.S. health care—and, in the care of patients with serious illness, payment and training challenges have exacerbated the problem. Three national leaders representing medical care, direct care work, and patient experience will discuss the big-picture workforce trends as they see them for 2024: what got us here, what would an optimized ‘serious illness care workforce’ look like, and how we can work toward that vision.

Jay Bhatt, Primary Care Internist and Geriatrician, Physician Executive, and Journalist at Deloitte Health

Susan Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN, Senior Vice President and Director, AARP Public Policy Institute & Chief Strategist, Center to Champion Nursing in America and Family Caregiving Initiatives, AARP

Robert Espinoza, MPA, Executive Vice President of Policy, PHI

Moderator Brynn Bowman, MPA, Chief Executive Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care Assistant Professor, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Breakout Sessions:

Continuing Education in Core Skills to Improve Care for People with Serious Illness                                                 

Every health professional that cares for patients living with a serious illness has the opportunity to relieve suffering—and improve quality of life—managing symptoms, supporting caregivers, and having skilled conversations about their patients’ goals of care. And yet, too often clinicians have not received training in these crucial skills needed in everyday practice. This session will focus on tips, tricks, and key principles for serious illness education initiatives.

Brynn Bowman, MPA, Chief Executive Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care Assistant Professor, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Madeline Jacobs, MPA, Senior Member Relationship Manager, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Puneeta Sharma, MD, MHCM, CPE

Yusimi Sobrino-Bonilla, MSN, APN, ANP-BC, CCRN, ACHPN

Lisa Simmons-Fields, DNP, MSA, RN, CCM, CPHQ

An Added Layer of Support: Community Health Workers, Doulas, and Coaches                                                             

Families trying to cope with serious illness may feel confused, anxious, or mistrustful, particularly when their clinicians are not from their community. To better engage with and support patients and families, many organizations are turning to lay health professionals to provide information, support, and guidance, in collaboration with palliative care or other medical care. This session will feature presenters from programs that employ different types of non-traditional staffing that are making a real difference in their communities.

Jane H. Euler, MS, Palliative Care, Founder of Present for You, LLC; End of Life Doula Certificates – University of Vermont

Jamil Rivers, CFO, EducationWorks; CEO and Founder, The Chrysalis Initiative

Marisette Hasan, RN, BSN, VP of Community Action and Policy, C-TAC

Moderator Allison Silvers, MBA, Chief Health Care Transformation Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Addressing Disparities for Black Patients with Serious Illness through Innovative Community Care Delivery Models

Black Americans appear at the ‘wrong end’ of nearly every statistical category of health disparities and inequities, including and especially those related to the social determinants of health. Overcoming these statistics requires that payers, health systems, health care professionals, and communities work together to make meaningful, sustainable changes. This session invites attendees to participate in an interactive discussion with community change agents about community health and faith partnerships models that have proven to make a positive impact and close equity gaps.

Chris Thompson, Director of Development, Reimagine

Dr. Clyde Oden Jr., Assistant Director at AC Care Alliance – Advance Illness Care Program

Elder Angela Overton, M.Div., Senior Advisor, C-TAC

Gloria Thomas Anderson, PhD, LMSW, Founder and CEO, Heart Tones™

Moderator Marisette Hasan, RN, BSN, VP of Community Action and Policy, C-TAC

Models that Expand Palliative Care Capacity and Reach                                                                                             

Workforce shortages coupled with a growing need for palliative care services means that not every organization has the capacity to deliver high-quality specialty palliative care. And yet, we need to provide the best care we can to patients with serious illness while we advocate for growth in investment in specialty palliative care. Palliative care champions have found new partnerships and initiatives over the past few years to bridge gaps in care for patients—and they’ve learned a lot along the way. This session will explore alternative ways to address a patient’s palliative care needs when resources are short.

Jeanie Youngwerth, MD, Instructor, Director of Palliative Care Curriculum Hospitalist, Fellowship Associate Program Director, Program Director, Palliative Care Service, Director of Palliative Care Curriculum University of Colorado Hospital, UCHealth Highlands Ranch Hospital

Shawndra Ferrell, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, ACHPN, System Clinical Manager, AAH Advance Care Planning & Shared; Decision-Making in Serious Illness Department; Member, Ethics Committee, Advocate Trinity & Advocate South Suburban Hospitals; Advocate Aurora Health

Angela Poppe Ries, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer of VyncaCare

Moderator Andrew E. Esch, MD, MBA, Senior Education Advisor, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Fireside Chat with Bill Novelli 

Bill Novelli, Professor, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University & C-TAC Board Co-Chair

Closing Keynote: Human Experience Required – Without It, No Need to Apply                                                                     

This keynote will explore the importance of a positive patient experience and how the compassion, care, and empathy of health care workers are requirements for such an experience to take place. When health care professionals are dealing with diverse patient populations, getting to know their patients beyond their immediate physical or social needs is necessary to build trust. Knowing as much as possible about a patient’s life, such as family cultural traditions or spiritual beliefs, can help uncover creative ways to respectfully assist patients in reaching their goals or desired outcomes. This keynote will examine how patient experience is measured, and how our mission, purpose, and values guide us to a great human experience for all. Attendees will leave with actions they can take to address what really matters most to patients and families.

Corey Kennard, MACM, CPXP, Pastor – Amplify Christian Church, Director – Director of Patient Experience at Ascension St. John Hospital, Certified Patient Experience Professional

NETWORKING RECEPTION

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

BREAKFAST & REGISTRATION opens at 7am

SUMMIT begins at 8am

Welcome back with Brynn Bowman, Center to Advance Palliative Care & Marisette Hasan, C-TAC

Keynote: Quality Patient Care Delivery Through Medicare and Medicaid Programs                                                         

No where inside of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is there more opportunity for payment and quality innovation than in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) and Medicaid. In this keynote, the chief strategy officer from CMMI and the chief medical officer of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will discuss the CMS levers to systematically advance person-centered care for beneficiaries with serious illness.

Purva Rawal, Ph.D. (CMMI) Chief Strategy Officer, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Center for Medicare

Aditi Mallick, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Medicaid & CHIP

Keynote: Blue Chair Awards                                                                                                                                             

Shirley Roberson, a patient advocate who passed away in 2022, envisioned the day when the U.S. health care system provides high-quality, person-centered care based on authentic clinician connection and empathy. Shirley’s story, asking her clinician to sit in a blue chair and listen to her, became symbolic of our mission to ensure that all people living with a serious illness are both seen and heard. Join us in honoring our patient, caregiver, and clinician advocates of the year who are carrying out Shirley’s vision.

Ashley Thompson, Senior Vice President, American Hospital Association

Breakout Sessions:

Success Stories in Advance Care Planning: A USAging / C-TAC Partnership Report                                                       

As part of a multi-year partnership with USAging, C-TAC has undertaken a review of successful advance care planning (ACP) programs across the country. In this session, the panel will provide an update on C-TAC’s ACP project, funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, and engage the audience in a discussion about the benefits and challenges of including ACP support in an Area Agency on Aging or other community-based organization’s portfolio of services.

Practical Strategies to Support Team Well-Being                                                                                                         

Palliative care teams are suffering due to increased demand for services, inadequate resources, moral distress, and exhaustion. How do we keep our teams going and create compassionate, supportive workplaces? This session will describe not only the “what” of team strife, but the “why,” and offer practical strategies teams can implement to boost morale, increase connection, and improve workforce quality of life.

Michelle Owens, DO, FAAHPM, Associate Medical Director, Hospice & Palliative Medicine/Family Medicine Physician, AAFP Leading Physician Well-Being (LPW) Ambassador; AAHPM Self-Care Forum Co-Founder & Co-Chair; Balint Leader; Well-Being & Grief Educator, Speaker & Consultant

Elizabeth Holman PsyD, Associate, Moral Injury of Healthcare

Moderator Stacie Sinclair, MPP, Associate Director, Policy and Care Transformation, Center to Advance Palliative Care

‘In Defense of the IDT’: Delivering Quality through the Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Team                                         

Patients living with serious illness face myriad challenges—not only physical, but psychological, emotional, spiritual, existential, social, practical…and the list continues. This is why it takes an interdisciplinary team (IDT) to deliver holistic person-centered care. Of course, as budgets get tight, many organizations consider trimming the team and concentrating just on those clinicians who are “billable.” In this session, you’ll hear how organizations are deploying all disciplines to deliver on both quality and business imperatives.

Rev. Leah McCann Klug, MDiv, BCC-PCHAC, Palliative Care Spiritual Care Provider, Swedish Medical Group, Seattle; PhD Candidate, University of Maryland, Baltimore

Stephanie Terauchi, MD, FAAHPM, Medical Director of Palliative Care for North Texas, Texas Oncology, PA

Moderator Constance Dahlin, MSN, ANP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN, Consultant, Center to Advance Palliative Care

The Importance of Caregiver Support                                                                                                                                   

Being a caregiver is not for the faint of heart, and caregivers who do not receive adequate support are at risk for their own bad outcomes. This session will help attendees better make the case for recognizing caregivers as the powerful care allies that they are and understand the health policy landscape related to caregiver support.

Alexandra Drane, Co-founder and CEO of ARCHANGELS

Allison J. Applebaum, Ph.D. Associate Attending Psychologist and Director, Caregivers Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Associate Professor of Psychology, Weill Cornell Medicine

Geri Feaster, MS, RN, Health Consultant, Israel Baptist Church, Leadership Council for Healthy Communities, Clinical & Community Linkage Lead HUBS

Moderator Donna W. Stevens, MHA, Partner, Leaderly Consultants, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Keynote: The Health of the Health Care Team                                                                                                           

Leaders and healthcare workers have experienced a life-threatening pandemic that exacerbated pre-existing burnout, exposed long-standing health inequities, caused moral injury, and precipitated widespread resignations and staff shortages. A concurrent pandemic of psychological stress injuries and mental health issues afflict our traumatized communities and workforce. Individual wellness programs won’t solve these problems. This keynote will explore the benefits and necessity of a trauma- and resilience-informed system-wide approach to supporting the health of the healthcare workforce.

Beth Lown, Chief Medical Officer, The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Saving a Life or Allowing Death….How do we know what the patient wants?

Ferdinando Mirarchi, DO, Chief Executive Office and Chief Medical Office, US ACS MIDEO, LLC & Chairman of the National Palliative Care Committee, USACS.

LUNCH will be served

Keynote: Bipartisan Policymakers: Congressional Activities to Address Serious Illness Care                                           

This session will provide cutting-edge information on what the 118th Congress is doing to support the needs of people with serious illness and their family caregivers. Key insiders on the Hill will discuss key issues, including hospice integrity and modernization, advance care planning, payment model developments, palliative care education and training, and how serious illness care fits into the broader congressional work on Medicare, Medicaid, Chronic Care 2.0, and other initiatives.

Moderator: Tom Koutsoumpas, Founder and President, Healthsperien LLC

Breakout Sessions:

Exploring the Impact and Feasibility of Solutions to Advance Health Equity                                                                 

After an extensive investigation on inequities experienced by Black patients and families living with serious illness, CAPC developed a menu of policy recommendations that aim to address disparities and advance equitable care. Similarly, C-TAC engaged a diverse group of stakeholders to develop its list of recommendations to advance health equity, particularly within Medicare, Medicaid, and CMMI. With a trove of good ideas, CAPC and C-TAC hope to gather feedback from session participants on both impact and feasibility in an effort to prioritize future health equity policy advocacy.

Kimberly Angelia Curseen MD, FAAHPM, Director of Outpatient Supportive Care; Emory Palliative Care Center, Director of Winship Palliative Medicine Program Associate Professor; Division of Palliative Medicine

Marian Grant, DNP, ACNP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN, RN, National Palliative Care Leader, Senior Regulatory Advisor for C-TAC, Policy and Marketing Consultant at Marian Grant Consulting

Allison Silvers, MBA, Chief Health Care Transformation Officer, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Meeting Social and Spiritual Needs Under Home-Based Models

In-home primary and palliative care models are proliferating under value-based payment. While medical care, including symptom management, is a critical component for homebound patients living with a serious illness, high-quality, equity-informed delivery models will also address patients’ social and spiritual needs in the home setting. This session will offer strategies to achieve this comprehensive service mix and ensure that all domains of patient experience are addressed.

Pippa Shulman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Medically at Home

William Logan, MD, Staff VP National Medical Director, Aspire Health

Thomas Cornwell, MD, Senior Medical Director of Village Medical at Home (VillageMD)

Moderator Rev. Dale Susan Edmonds, M. Div., Family Hard Conversation Navigator, Talk-Early-Talk-Often.com.

The Federal Focus on Hospice Integrity and Modernization

Recent Reports questioning the integrity and quality of some Medicare hospice providers has led to work to ensure the program’s quality. At the same time, C-TAC and other advocates and providers have been working on hospice program modernization ideas to reflect evolving patient needs. This panel will address the challenges and solutions for hospice integrity concerns, and potential innovations to strengthen and expand the Medicare hospice benefit for the future.

Moderator Brian Lindberg, Senior Policy Advisor, C-TAC

Community-Based Collaboration to Meet the Needs of Patients with Serious Physical and Mental Illness

People living with a serious mental illness receive care in the mental health system throughout their lives. When their mental illness becomes secondary to their serious physical illness, they enter a different framework of care. This session alerts us to the challenges this population faces, and illustrates how collaboration across multiple community entities can successfully meet their complex needs.

Lakshmi K. Reddy, MD, Medical Director, Highmark Wholecare

Lauran Hardin, MSN, CNL, FNAP, FAAN, Chief Integration Officer, HC2 Strategies

Moderator Andrew E. Esch, MD, MBA, Senior Education Advisor, Center to Advance Palliative Care

Keynote: We Owe Our Patients and Families Courageous Leadership                                                                         

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” There are many factors – operational complexity, profit motive, political winds, and societal factors that drive health, to name a few – that contribute to the current design of the US health system.  We all want to improve the quality of care delivered to patients with serious illness and their families – but what does that look like today, tomorrow, or next year?

In this final keynote of the Summit, our speakers will reflect on what it means to be a courageous leader in US health care in 2024 and beyond. How can we acknowledge the current realities we consider unacceptable for patients and families, while maintaining the drive to make positive change? How can we build the coalitions – both formal and informal – needed to solve problems? How can we balance the need to do the best we can for patients under current parameters, while keeping our eyes on the audacious goals we have for the future?

Closing Keynote with Brynn Bowman, Center to Advance Palliative Care & Jon Broyles, C-TAC

Day concludes at 3:30pm