Center to Advance Palliative Care

Nick, I recently started as Alaska's first Fellow. I am at Providence Alaska Medical Center where I completed my Family Medicine residency. I'm now working with Dr. Ted Heffernan who came to us from San Diego 3 years ago to start the Palliative Care service here at PAMC. The team, which consists of Ted, a nurse practioner, a social worker, and now me for the next year, has been wanting to start seeing patients in the home. I did a few home visits as a resident. They are hoping I will jump-start this program. In answer to the questions you posted to the previous person, most of these would be to people we picked up on our inpatient service who did not transition to hospice. We have a few outpts that we manage over the phone and who occassionally come in to our office. We have a extemely simple paper medical record that we keep on file in our office. We are 95% an inpatient consult service, so we dictate our consults. I believe I would have the option of dictating progress notes in the hospital system. We bill our inpatient services through the hospital. I am assuming we could do the same for outpt home visits, but I'd have to ask. Any advice you can give about starting this up would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance. Bret Benally Thompson