Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act

$20 million a year would go toward training hospice and palliative care staff; what patients pay would not change.

More about this bill

More doctors, nurses and aides would be trained to care for people with serious illness. The bill would authorize $15,000,000 a year in grants to medical, nursing and other health schools. It would add $5,000,000 a year for nursing schools, health facilities and nurse aide programs. Both run for fiscal years 2026 through 2030. Congress would still have to approve that money each year. HHS would have to favor programs serving rural, tribal and underserved areas, children, and minority groups. New teachers in the field could get career awards for up to five years. The bill does not state the yearly amount. It points to an existing award in geriatrics, worth at least $75,000 a year. Students in nursing, social work, chaplaincy and related fields could get awards too. They would then have to teach or practice palliative care for at least five years. A separate faculty fellowship stream is capped at $150,000 per award and 24 programs. Patients would see no change in what Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance covers or pays. Who can get hospice or palliative care would not change either. The bill repeats an existing ban on paying for anything meant to cause a patient's death. That ban does not limit pain relief. The federal health research agency could post plain palliative care information for patients. If it does, that material would have to appear on Medicare, Veterans Affairs and Administration on Aging websites. Each National Institutes of Health institute would also report what it spends on palliative care research. Most of the new grant programs would start 90 days after the bill became law. The nursing grants and the rest would start right away.