Before adjourning until November, Congress passed a stopgap measure to fund the government at current levels until December 20. When they return after the election for a lame duck session, House and Senate leadership will need to prioritize passing a Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations bill. With legislators are home in their districts over the next few months, it is the perfect time to let them know how important it is to fund priorities such as palliative care research in an appropriations bill but also to make sure any end-of-year package includes language to extend COVID-19 telehealth flexibilities, including the option to conduct the hospice recertification face-to-face visit via telehealth, past the deadline of December 31.  For more information, read the letter that HPNA and partner organizations sent to House and Senate leadership last week.

On September 18, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 41-0 to pass H.R. 7623, the Telehealth Modernization Act. This bipartisan legislation would extend through 2026 certain flexibilities authorized during the public health emergency related to COVID-19, including the opportunity to use telehealth to conduct the required face-to-face (F2F) encounter under the Medicare hospice benefit. It also would allow rural health clinics and federal qualified health centers to serve as the distant site, the home of a beneficiary to serve as a distant site for all services, and all types of practitioners to furnish telehealth services, as determined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Take your education on the go with HPNA’s new mobile-friendly platform, the HPNA Learning Center! All HPNA education materials, including webinars, virtual events, and certification prep courses, are now available in the HPNA Learning Center.

The Subsequent Call for Case Studies and Scholarly Works in Progress is specifically intended for professionals in training (scholars) or early career hospice and palliative care professionals to have an opportunity to present their peer-reviewed work at a nationally accredited conference in addition to having their work published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

The 2024 Sigma Foundation for Nursing Research Grant awardee is HPNA member Jyotsana Parajuli, PhD for her project “Development and Content Validation of a Palliative Care Readiness Tool for Family Caregivers of Older Adults with Cancer”