Bill > S09621

This bill aims to improve access to palliative care, which is defined as medical treatment focused on relieving pain and suffering and enhancing a patient's quality of life, including hospice care, and community-based palliative care, which is delivered in a patient's home or other community settings. It mandates that hospitals, nursing homes, and certain assisted living residences establish and implement written policies and procedures to ensure that patients with advanced life-limiting conditions or illnesses are identified and provided with timely access to information, counseling, and services, including community-based palliative care, and that referrals are made to appropriate palliative care and hospice services based on patient needs and preferences. The bill also directs the Department of Health to monitor and report on hospice utilization for patients who die within a certain period after hospital discharge to assess access to hospice services, and it establishes a five-million-dollar annual demonstration program, potentially administered by a statewide organization focused on end-of-life care, to support projects that improve coordination between hospitals, health systems, and hospice providers, with a focus on improving transitions of care, timely hospice referrals, and coordination of serious illness care, requiring participating entities to implement policies for identifying patients who may benefit from palliative care, including specific clinical triggers, and to document whether patients met identification criteria, received palliative care or hospice services, and if a referral was offered and accepted or declined.