ianacare’s Post

What drives behavior in healthcare? Payment models. It was a privilege to be on this panel this week with Tonya Saffer (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), Laura Makaroff (American Cancer Society), and Marian Grant, DNP, ACNP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN (The Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) to discuss innovative payment models to support family caregivers. Each of them is truly a mover and shaker shaping policy that make tangible impact to family caregivers. • Tonya Saffer's team at CMMI rolled out the transformative GUIDE model to support families of patients with dementia. For the first time, family caregivers are truly integrated into a comprehensive payment model. We learned that patients with dementia make up almost 20% of Medicare costs, and the model recognizes the role family caregivers play in driving quality of care for these patients and in reducing those costs while improving quality of life. It’s a win/win/win. No wonder interest in the program surpassed all expectations! • Laura Makaroff's team at ACS has developed a wealth of resources at cancer.org and on the ACS CARES app. They have advocated for comprehensive care models inclusive of family caregivers as well as to raise awareness of the issue of medical debt for survivors and families. • Marian Grant, DNP, ACNP-BC, ACHPN, FPCN, FAAN and the team at C-TAC have been working with CMS to enhance the billing codes for Caregiver Training and Support (CTS). It is due in no small part to their efforts and feedback that the CTS codes now include caregiver assessments, expanded training scope including for wound care, and telehealth access. We are truly grateful for their critical work. We shared insights from ianacare's experience supporting family caregivers over the last 6 years, including the importance of providing an infrastructure for appointments, respite, navigation, and training. We dove deep into the numbers, and showed how we’ve eased caregiver burden and improved quality of life for patients and caregivers. We are thrilled that the GUIDE care and payment model will drive broader expansion of these results. It’s inspiring to be with these changemakers and to see policy and care delivery coming together to truly improve care. With Jessica Nam Kim