Defining Serious Illness
Identifying Older Adults with Serious Illness: A Critical Step toward Improving the Value of Health Care
Kelly, Covinsky, Gorges, McKendrick, Bollens-Lund, Morrison and Richie, Health Serv Res. 2017 Feb; 52(1): 113–131
The authors describe a way to predict hospitalizations, Medicare spend and mortality by using progressively restrictive definitions of serious illness that examine the intersection between illness, function and utilization patterns. The central goal is to offer a way to deploy the right level of clinical services to those most likely to benefit from that service level. The most intensive home-based palliative care services can then be tightly targeted to the smaller, highest risk group.
Palliative Care Services
Evaluating Medical Decision-Making Capacity in Practice
Craig Barstow, MD., Brian Shanan, MD and Melissa Roberts, MD discuss how to assess decision-making capacity in an article from the American Family Physician published July 1, 2018.
Strengthening Health System Capacity for High Quality Illness Care
The California Health Care Foundation offers this brief for organizational leaders covering why palliative care, why support partnership, suggestions for replication and next steps.
Home and Community-based Palliative Care: Best Practices and Resources for Providers
Prepared for the Virginia Association for Home Care and Hospice by Jennifer Inker, PHD, Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Gerontology
A concise yet comprehensive guide that includes a definition of palliative care and useful comparisons between palliative care and hospice, and palliative care and all other medical care. The document clearly summarizes the interdisciplinary team, the eight domains of care, metrics, and provides a list of organizations with home-based palliative care programs with evidence of effectiveness.
Top 10 Things Palliative Care Clinicians Wished Everyone Knew About Palliative Care
Jacob J. Strand, MD; Mihir M. Kamdar, MD; and Elise C. Carey, MD
This article discusses the changing role of modern palliative care, addresses common misconceptions, and presents an argument for early integration of palliative care in the treatment of patients dealing with serious illness.
Serious Illness and End of Life Care
California Health Care Foundation has a significant number of resources on their webpages dedicated to serious illness care.
‘‘Why Are We Doing This?’’: Clinician Helplessness in the Face of Suffering
Anthony L. Back, MD, Cynda H. Rushton, PhD, Alfred W. Kaszniak, PhD, and Joan S. Halifax, PhD
Shows how clinicians can reframe helplessness as a self-barometer indicating their level of engagement with a patient.
Palliative Care Needs Report: The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization released these survey results in 2020, detailing data from their members about the scope of services, payer mix, reimbursement, care settings, patient volumes, team composition and more.
Palliative Care Needs Report: The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization released these survey results in 2020, detailing data from their members about the scope of services, payer mix, reimbursement, care settings, patient volumes, team composition and more.
This paper is a reference for best practices with telemedicine guidelines. Specific steps are provided for administrative, clinical, information technology, financial, training and education, and marketing teams.
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) palliative care (PC) guidelines recommend screening all patients for PC issues at the first visit with their oncologist and at subsequent, clinically relevant times.
Weaving Palliative Care into Primary Care: A Guide for Community Health Centers
California Health Care Foundation provides this resource for Community Health Centers, but the content easily translates to Rural Health Clinics or other rural healthcare settings. Excellent material to build a program.
Up Close: A Field Guide to Community- Based Palliative Care in California
The guide helps the reader move from concept to practice, identifying successes, challenges and aspirations.
Identifying Patients in Need of a Palliative Care Assessment in the Hospital Setting
A Consensus Report from the Center to Advance Palliative Care
David E. Weissman, M.D. and Diane E. Meier, M.D.
Workforce shortages, late referrals, and palliative care program resource constraints present significant barriers to meeting the needs of hospitalized patients facing serious illnesses. The Center to Advance Palliative Care convened a consensus panel to select criteria by which patients at high risk for unmet palliative care needs can be identified for a palliative care screening assessment
Stratis Health Rural Palliative Care Impact Report July 2016
Stratis Health led efforts to determine palliative care models that work in rural communities and to establish measures to understand how rural palliative care delivers value.
When Palliative Care Is a Family Affair: Serious Disease in Adults With Young Children
Betty R. Ferrell, PhD, RN
Support of patients and families is a complex process that is influenced by such factors as culture, family roles and relationships, and family communication.
Rural Palliative Care Services
Expanding Rural Access Through Primary Palliative Care Training: Alebra Schol, MD is a guest blogger for the Shirley Hayes Institute for Palliative Care at California State University. This brief blog discusses the inequities in access in rural and also refers the reader to the course offered by the institute called Primary Palliative Care Skills for Every Provider.
Home on the Range: Plans and Providers Team Up to Bring Palliative Care to Rural Californians: The California Health Care Foundation published this 2020 monograph about the development of rural palliative care and lessons learned.
Deprescribing
Assessment of Attitudes Toward Deprescribing in Older Medicare Beneficiaries in the United States
Physicians considering deprescribing as part of comprehensive, patient-centered care should be reassured that a majority of older Americans are open to having 1 or more of their medicines deprescribed if their physician says it is possible, and more than two-thirds want to reduce the number of medicines that they are taking.
Palliative Care Network of Wisconsin Fast Facts on Deprescribing
- #321 Deprescribing
- #322 Discontinuation of Statins at the End of Life
- #369 Communication Techniques for Deprescribing Conversations
Management of Symptoms
American Cancer Society's Achieving Balance in State Pain Policy: A Report Card
Sonderegger Research Center at the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy examined a recent American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network survey that showed patients are experiencing problems accessing opioid medications prescribed by their doctors.
A study the effects of lactulose and probiotics for secondary prophylaxis of hepatic encephalopathy (HE).
Pruritus in Kidney Disease
Sara A. Combs, MD, J. Pedro Teixeira, MD, and Michael J. Germain, MD
The most recent epidemiologic data have suggested that approximately 40% of patients with end-stage renal disease experience moderate to severe pruritus associated strongly with poor quality of life, impaired sleep, depression, and increased mortality.
The Business Case for Palliative Care
Palliative Care Consultation Teams Cut Hospital Costs For Medicaid Beneficiaries
On average, patients who received palliative care incurred $6,900 less in hospital costs during a given admission than a matched group of patients who received usual care.
Analysis of Medicare Pre Hospice Spending and Hospice Utilization
T.J. Christian, Ph.D.
A slide presentation to MedPac on Hospice spending and utilization patterns.
Hospice and End of Life Care
Improving Care at the End of Life
A report of the Aspen Institute Health Strategy Group tasked with providing recommendations on important and complex health issues to promote improvements in policy and practice. The report includes five big ideas that will transform the way we provide end-of-life care.
Barbara Bush's End-of-Life Decision Stirs Debate Over 'Comfort Care'
Kaiser Health News article on Barbara Bush's End-of-Life Decision Stirs Debate Over 'Comfort Care.'