Compassionate Care Act

The "Compassionate Care Act" seeks to significantly improve end-of-life care by enhancing both public awareness and healthcare provider capabilities regarding advance care planning. It mandates a national public education campaign, led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services through the CDC, to inform individuals about the importance of advance care planning and their right to direct healthcare decisions. This campaign will utilize various media, provide culturally appropriate information, and promote early engagement with hospice and palliative care services, running continuously for at least five years. The bill also focuses heavily on educating healthcare providers. It requires the establishment of a public internet website for providers under Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Indian Health Service, offering resources on advance care planning requirements, quality improvement, and best practices for discussing end-of-life care. Furthermore, it creates a pilot program to award grants to medical and nursing schools to establish end-of-life training requirements in their curricula, emphasizing palliative medicine and communication skills. The Act also directs the development of core end-of-life care quality measures for various provider settings and mandates continuing education curricula on advance care planning for qualified health care providers. To expand access to end-of-life care services, the legislation includes Medicare amendments. It permanently extends the authorization for using telehealth to conduct face-to-face encounters required for hospice recertification. Additionally, it removes geographic restrictions for telehealth services furnished for advance care planning purposes under Medicare, effective January 1, 2027. Finally, the bill commissions several important studies and evaluations to inform future policy. The Secretary is directed to study barriers to establishing a national uniform policy on advance directives , including issues of usability, interoperability, and the feasibility of a national form. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) will study the feasibility of a national advance directive registry, while the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will examine requiring EHR vendors to prominently store advance care planning documents and initiate demonstration programs for best practices in digital advance directives.