Center to Advance Palliative Care Launches Three New Palliative Care Leadership Centers™ Focused on Home and Office/Clinic Settings, Leading Way for Community-Based Palliative Care
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is pleased to announce the launch of three new Palliative Care Leadership Centers (PCLC) focused specifically on the development of home and office-based palliative care. Selected in 2015, the three are now open for enrollment. The launch is the latest effort by CAPC to develop the nation’s palliative care programs beyond the hospital into the community setting where people actually live.
The point of community-based palliative care is to maintain a person’s life at home or place of residence by maximizing quality of life, optimizing function and providing care that supports goals and preferences. Studies show that people facing serious illness also prefer to be in their own environment.
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses. It focuses on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses, social workers and other specialists, palliative care teams work together with a patient’s doctors to provide an extra layer of support. Palliative care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided along with curative treatment.
In addition to the Palliative Care Leadership Centers, CAPC provides an online curriculum, virtual office hours with experts, webinars, videos, podcasts and an online forum targeted to integrating palliative care into community settings. CAPC also recently released Palliative Care in the Home: A Guide to Program Design – the first reference guide of its kind.
The PCLC initiative provides intensive training and a full-year of mentoring to teams from hospitals, hospice, home health, medical group practices and other health care organizations.
CAPC launched the PCLC initiative in 2003 to catalyze palliative care program development and growth. A demonstrably effective method for the diffusion of palliative care innovation, PCLC training reduces the opportunity costs for palliative care program startup and delivery. It also standardizes best practices for all areas of program development and growth, including business and financial planning, clinical and staffing models, measurement and staffing.
The new Palliative Care Leadership Centers focused on home and office-based palliative care are:
- Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, New York
- Presbyterian Healthcare Services, Albuquerque, New Mexico
- University of Virginia Health System (UVA), Charlottesville, Virginia
They join six other long-standing PCLCs:
- Fairview Health System, Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Mount Carmel Health System, Columbus, Ohio
- Palliative Care Center of the Bluegrass, Lexington, Kentucky
- University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham, Alabama
- University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco, California
- VCU Massey Cancer Center, Richmond, Virginia
All Palliative Care Leadership Centers were selected through a highly competitive process that focused on clinical excellence, outstanding leadership, reputation and experience.
"To truly meet the needs of our society's most complex and vulnerable patients, palliative care must be delivered where people facing serious illness actually live. We must expand beyond the hospital setting to reach people living at home, in nursing homes, and receiving care in their clinician's offices," said CAPC Director, Diane E. Meier, MD. “Practical how-to knowledge, intensive coaching and mentoring from experienced leaders, and support for successful program-building through the PCLC initiative results in deep organizational capacity to serve this high-need population."
Older adults with multiple chronic conditions make up 66 percent of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and account for 93 percent of total Medicare expenditures. These people are at the highest risk for poor outcomes. Therefore, providers have strong incentives to make sure that patients and their families receive palliative care outside the clinical setting.
About CAPC
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is a national, member-based organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality palliative care services for people facing serious illness. CAPC provides hospitals, hospices, payers and other health care organizations with the tools, training, technical assistance and metrics needed to support the successful implementation and integration of palliative care. To learn more about CAPC, visit capc.org.
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CONTACT: Lisa Morgan, LDM Strategies, 212-924-6182 or [email protected].