Palliative Care Blog

CHCF Brief Highlights Progress in Access to Palliative Care

Californian’s access to specialty palliative care has improved dramatically over the past several years, but challenges remain in scaling and sustaining smaller programs, standardizing scope of care, and educating patients and providers, according to an issue brief released this week by the California Health Care Foundation.

“Palliative Care in California: Narrowing the Gap,” first published by CHCF in 2014, has been updated with 2017 data that reflects strides in the accessibility of inpatient and community-based palliative care throughout the state. The brief includes interactive maps illustrating the need for palliative care by specific region, as well as how palliative care services are offered, and how capacity compares to need.

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Renewing a Call for Comprehensive, Universally Available Palliative Care

Need to Better Support Patients with Serious Illness is Stronger than Ever

By Jennifer Moore Ballentine

May was hardly a slow news month—volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, North Korean diplomatic back-and-forths, the royal wedding, another tragic school shooting—so you can be forgiven for not noticing that California’s End of Life Option Act was overturned. The Riverside County Superior Court decision was immediately appealed, but a stay was not granted.

For now, while the appeals process plays out, the law offering a legal process for physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of medications for terminally ill, competent patients has been ruled unconstitutional and void. Needless to say, this has created a new turmoil in the palliative and end-of-life care environment here in our home state. While the specifics are local, the issues are national.

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Summit: Progress in Care for Seriously Ill, but More Work Ahead

California leads Nation in Palliative Care Policy, Accessibility and Practice

By Melanie Marshall

SACRAMENTO—California has made considerable progress in improving care for seriously ill patients and families, but much more must be done to meet the needs of our rapidly aging population, said healthcare providers, educators and advocates during a policy summit this week hosted by the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.

The most pressing challenges, summit participants said, include educating and growing the palliative care workforce to meet increasing demand; aligning models of care delivery and payment; improving clinician and patient understanding about palliative care; expanding the evidence base through new research; and addressing social determinants and the complex needs of vulnerable patient populations who disproportionately impact healthcare costs.

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Importance of Unpaid Family Caregivers Remains Largely Undocumented

Almost 8 million older adults with significant disabilities live in the community with help from family and unpaid caregivers. Caregivers not only provide assistance with everyday activities, they help with a range of healthcare activities, including physician visits. Given that there are 48 million Americans who are 65 years or older, this means one in eight receive help with daily activities, including healthcare tasks such as arranging services, coordinating care, and managing medications.

In a nation where “show me the data” has become a requirement for scientific research and medical care efficacy, effective change efforts must be supported by more than rhetoric. Jennifer Wolff, PhD, has focused her work on unique studies that gather data on the work of unpaid family caregivers and the benefit that care provides to the patient, the health system, and public health.

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Nurse Expert in Elder Care and Family Caregiving Will Offer her Perspective at Symposium

An internationally recognized expert in gerontological nursing and nursing education, Symposium panel participant Theresa A. Harvath, PhD, RN, FAAN, focuses on a rapidly growing segment of Americans: people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and their family caregivers. Performing research that seeks to understand and improve the relationship between these individuals and their caregivers, Dr. Harvath hopes to use the findings so in-home care can be improved. She puts her research into action as the founding director of the Family Caregiving Institute at The Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, launched in 2017 to advance research, education and policy to support caregivers.

Study Launches Action to Aid Caregivers

After the publication of Home Alone: Family Caregivers Providing Complex Chronic Care, a 2012 study by the AARP Public Policy Institute and the United Hospital Fund, Dr. Harvath was among a team of collaborators, including AARP, the United Hospital Fund, the Family Caregiver Alliance, and caregivers themselves, who sprang into action to respond to the study’s findings.

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