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A 2014 Hospice Ad Blitz Launches Amid Obamacare Rollout

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In an effort to improve awareness about hospice and palliative care, the industry is launching a first-ever national education and marketing campaign this year.

The yearlong blitz by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, which organizers say will be a “multi-million-dollar” effort, will start this month with a grassroots campaign to get stories from hospice patients and their families. Such stories will then become part of a multi-media campaign to educate Americans about hospice and palliative care and spur a “national conversation on the value of hospice and palliative care.”

It’s the 40th anniversary of hospice in the U.S. The first hospice was started in Connecticut in 1964 and coverage of such services began two decades later under the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

But most Americans don’t understand what hospice offers unless they have had a personal experience, analysts and providers say.

“What we are trying to do is begin a national conversation on palliative and hospice care earlier,” said Anita Brikman, NHPCO’s senior vice president of strategic communications said in an interview with Forbes. “By documenting and sharing real-life stories in an honest, emotionally candid way, we hope to encourage families to consider or seek out a hospice or palliative care provider three to six months before the end of life, not in the final days.”

The hospice industry has a financial stake in the campaign’s success, particularly as more Americans get medical care coverage this year under the Affordable Care Act and a population of baby boomers ages. For example, more and more medical care providers are incorporating end-of-life care into accountable care organizations (ACOs), which are contracting with Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers to achieve better outcomes.

More than 5.3 million Medicare beneficiaries will be receiving care from these ACOs, according to an announcement last month by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which runs the Medicare program.

The government-led program works with Medicare contracting with doctors and hospitals through an ACO which, in turn, pushes high quality, less expensive care rather than today’s payment system that often leads to excessive care by paying for each treatment or procedure that isn’t always better. The providers in an ACO are responsible for managing the care of the health plan enrollees and are financially rewarded if the enrollees, or patients, stay out of the more expensive hospital.

ACOs are contracting with private insurers like Aetna (AET), Cigna (CI), Humana (HUM), UnitedHealth Group (UNH) and Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.

The hospice industry sees its service in keeping with the goals of the health law and such trends in medical care reimbursement that emphasize lower costs and quality like ACOs and the patient-centered medical home. Hospice, they say, is less expensive and what the patient wants as opposed to inpatient hospital care.

Hospice is generally considered medical care provided in a patient’s home for those facing illness near the end of their lives. Such care can also be provided in a center, hospital, nursing home or other long-term care facility.

“Never before has the importance that hospice plays in our healthcare system been clearer,” Donald Schumacher, president and chief executive officer of National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization said in a statement to Forbes. “As more and more baby boomers are facing the end of their lives, the timely and appropriate referral reduces family burden and provides the patient the opportunity to say good bye with peace, comfort and dignity.”

Though the association’s own data shows the number of patients served by hospice has jumped 25 percent to more than 1.5 million in the last five years from 2008, medical care providers say the patients or their families often don’t realize hospice was an option much later in a patient’s “life-limiting” illness.

“People want to be, as much as possible, at home . . . pain free and surrounding by family and friends,” Brikman said.