Spiritual care

From page 1 patients at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. CMS established three specific health care billing codes in 2020 so the VA could monitor and evaluate the spiritual care services it provides.

In the Health Affairs commentary, coauthors Dennis Heaphy and Sasha Shenk argue that spiritual care services “are an oft neglected but important part of comprehensive care.” The patient advocates maintain that providing spiritual care to dual eligible clients would promote health, wellbeing and health justice for people with complex care needs.

“Spirituality at its core is about meaningmaking amidst physical, psychological, and social challenges such as poverty and discrimination,” the article says. “Evolving models of integrated care for dual eligibles, if they are to be person-centered and advance health equity, must, in the words of (psychiatrist and author) Viktor Frankl, address the ‘unheard cry for meaning’ among low-income people with disabilities and elders.”

Heaphy and Shenk say spiritual care could be “seamlessly integrated” into capitated managed-care plans such as the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, known as PACE. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates the number of dual eligible clients in Medicaid managed care plans at 3.4 million.

Ministry-funded care

Teresa Galvin Anderson is mission leader for Trinity Health PACE and Trinity Health At Home. Anderson says she is in “absolute agreement” with Heaphy and Shenk that CMS should be reimbursing providers for spiritual care provided to PACE clients. Trinity Health already offers spiritual care to the about 3,200 clients in