Can Policy Help to Expand Advance Care Planning?

As the world re-emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, health care advocates work to remove barriers to advance care planning, expand completions of advance directives, and ensure interoperability for advance directives in electronic health records (EHRs).

Gender Questions Challenge Hospice and Palliative Professionals to Come Down on the Side of Inclusivity

Hospice and palliative care nurses play an important role in understanding the care needs of LGBT patients, honoring their journey, and promoting awareness and inclusivity within the inter-disciplinary team.

Respect for Direct Care Workers in Hospice Care

For hospices and home health agencies, home health aides are vital members of the care team. But in other models of home and community-based care, their roles may be less clear. Offering them meaningful career development opportunities can go a long way in helping to address disparities in palliative care.

Community Health Workers Offer Access to Underserved Groups

Before COVID hit, Resolution Care Network – a telemedicine palliative care service in Eureka, Calif. – employed community health workers (CHWs) as an extension of its interdisciplinary palliative care team. They were the agency’s feet on the ground, its eyes and ears in the field, said CEO Michael Fratkin, MD.

Ensuring Equitable Access to Needed Care for the Seriously Ill through the Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM)

More than a year into the pandemic, we now have data on the disproportionate devastation wrought upon racial and ethnic minority groups across our country.

Physician Assistants Pursue Larger Roles in Hospice and Palliative Care

The role of PAs in hospice and palliative care has been advancing over the past several years and is poised to keep growing, a great step in expanding access to palliative care to people who need it.

Crucial Need to Expand Palliative Care in Rural Communities

Interest in palliative care appears to have grown during the pandemic, but one sector still lags: rural communities. The challenges in rural care delivery are significant, but so is the need, experts say.

Improving Advance Care Planning

Discussing and documenting your healthcare wishes doesn’t always guarantee you’ll get the kind of care you want, yet there is undeniable value in having those conversations, says our Executive Director Jennifer Moore Ballentine.

The Privilege of Palliative Care Social Work

Social worker Nicole Perry, author of our Building Healthy Boundaries eBook, reflects on all she’s learned from patients, families, and palliative care colleagues against the backdrop of serious illness.

Palliative Care and COVID: One Year In

Palliative care experts are hopeful the COVID crisis may be waning, but remain concerned about new variants, scarce healthcare resources, and the long-term effects of moral distress among healthcare workers.

Groups Urge Developing a National Strategy for COVID-Related Grief

As America’s death toll from COVID-19 climbs, experts say the pandemic has transformed the landscape of loss in ways that impact our collective experience of grief -- and that we need a national response.

Advancing Primary Palliative Care

Experts agree expanding primary palliative care is crucial to effectively supporting the growing number of people living with serious illnesses.But getting buy-in from generalist clinicians has been challenging.