Outpatient Palliative Care Clinics

Abstract

Abstract Outpatient clinics are a new frontier for interprofessional palliative care, a specialty focused on improving the quality of life and relief of symptoms of anyone living with serious illness. Most of the care for chronic and serious illness occurs at home, not in hospitals. Outpatient palliative care clinics reduce the risk of unnecessary re-hospitalizations, and shorten the hospital stays that do occur. Inadequate reimbursement, limited space, and insufficient staffing, as well as limited data on its effectiveness, have posed challenges to the growth of outpatient interprofessional palliative care clinics. This chapter offers a description of the interprofessional team within the context of outpatient palliative care clinics, the models of delivery, the populations they serve, and the challenges to implement interprofessional outpatient palliative care clinics in different settings.