Knoxville, TN (2020) Changes in Medicaid/CHIP regulations under section 2302 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have required all state Medicaid plans to finance curative and hospice services for children since 2010. A new NIH/NINR-funded study by a team of researchers in the College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, shows that implementation of Concurrent Care for Children varied significantly at the state-level. Researchers found that state guidelines focused on definitions of curative care, payment information, staffing guidelines, care coordination between providers, eligibility criteria, and clinical guidance were different among the fifty states and Washington, D.C.

Nineteen states in the study offered no state-specific guidelines on Concurrent Care for Children. Those states that did provide guidelines frequently offered definitions (35%), followed by payment information (29%) and care coordination requirements (27%). The findings suggest that state implementation of Concurrent Care for Children may have created barriers in the implementation and utilization among hospices, clinicians, and families. This research sets the stage for the team’s evaluation of the effectiveness of pediatric concurrent hospice care to improve outcomes for children and their families.

To learn more about the study, please visit https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01192

Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institute Of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01-NR017848 (Lindley, PI). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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