Early palliative care: Where compassion drives efficiency
Palliative care is often misunderstood as support reserved for the final stages of illness. Early palliative care is one of the most effective ways to improve quality, reduce costs, and humanize the care experience for people with serious, complex conditions. About 5% of members drive roughly 50% of total health plan costs, and these individuals are often navigating serious illness, multiple comorbidities, and fragmented care.
Appropriately timed palliative care aligns clinical precision with compassion, supporting patients and families as care needs intensify while easing the strain on providers and health plans. By integrating symptom management, emotional support, and care coordination during periods of rising complexity, palliative care helps reduce avoidable hospitalizations, improve satisfaction, and deliver measurable value across the continuum of care. It is a model that proves efficiency and empathy are not opposite; they are interdependent.
Rethinking palliative care
Across health plans, a relatively small percentage of members (often about 5%) account for nearly half of total healthcare costs. These individuals are frequently navigating serious illnesses, multiple comorbidities, and fragmented care that drives repeated hospitalizations and high utilization. Palliative care is not about intervening for everyone; it is about identifying this high-need population and providing coordinated, goal-aligned support when complexity begins to escalate.
Palliative care is evolving beyond its traditional role as end-of-life support into a model that strengthens care quality and coordination across the entire health journey. When delivered alongside active treatment, palliative care becomes a proactive approach to managing complex needs, improving communication among care teams, and honoring what matters most to each patient. This reimagined model recognizes that palliative care is not about giving up on treatment; it is about giving patients and families the clarity, comfort, and continuity they need to live well while receiving it.
The whole-person approach to serious illness
Serious illness affects far more than the physical body. It reshapes routines, relationships, finances, and emotional well-being. A whole-person approach recognizes these interconnected dimensions and brings them together through coordinated, compassionate care. By integrating physical, behavioral, and social support, patients receive more than treatment; they receive understanding. This approach empowers care teams to see everyone’s full story, ensuring that clinical excellence is matched by empathy, communication, and respect for each person’s goals and values.
While palliative and hospice care are often conflated, Carelon’s palliative care model has always supported members alongside active treatment, and can help prevent unnecessary transitions to hospice by improving symptom control, communication, and care coordination.
Precision identification and integrated palliative care
Identifying members who can benefit from palliative care allows plans to deliver the right support. Through data-driven insights, clinical collaboration, and compassionate communication, care teams can recognize when symptom burden, psychosocial stress, or care fragmentation begins to drive utilization. Integrating palliative care alongside active treatment creates a seamless experience that addresses both medical and emotional needs; helping stabilize care, improve continuity, and reduce avoidable escalation.
Benefits of palliative care: results that blend compassion and cost efficiency
Palliative care can deliver real returns in value and quality of care. A recent retrospective registry-based study of cancer patients showed that those who had outpatient specialist palliative care contact incurred 33% lower hospital costs in the last 30 days of life compared to patients without such contact. Additionally, a 2024 analysis of patients initiating palliative care before the final three months of life found their risk of ICU admission was nearly halved (HR 0.47) and their risk of hospital death was reduced by nearly half.
For health plans and employers, this means fewer avoidable admissions and less intensive utilization during periods of rising clinical complexity, in turn driving lower total cost of care.
Driving palliative care cost savings
Palliative care consistently demonstrates measurable savings while improving quality and satisfaction. Studies indicate that patients who received a palliative care consultation within two days of hospital admission experienced 22% lower costs for moderate comorbidity and 32% lower costs for severe comorbidity, and palliative-support models reduced hospitalizations, emergency visits, and overall Medicare spending for seriously ill beneficiaries.
The case for palliative care
The evidence for palliative care is clear: when support begins during active treatment, patients experience better outcomes, and the healthcare system operates more efficiently. Engagement helps manage symptoms, reduce stress, and align care with patient goals, resulting in fewer hospitalizations and higher satisfaction. For health plans, integrating palliative services is both compassionate and strategic, improving quality metrics while managing total cost of care.