Seeding a Revolution Post-COVID: Equipping Staff in Long-Term Care to Integrate Palliative Care (FR267)

Abstract

Outcomes 1. Recognize opportunities in existing long-term care workflows to assess for palliative care or hospice needs and trigger palliative care consultation 2. Describe four key palliative care services that long-term care professionals can be taught and incorporate into their own practice, including timely referral to palliative care or hospice 3. Devise strategies to improve collaborations with long-term care providers in their own communitiesIt is estimated that the majority of people receiving long-term care services have unmet palliative care needs, and for those near the end of life, hospice care remains underused. These disparities were highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now many long-term care programs and facilities are eager to address the palliative care needs of their patients or residents and avoid unnecessary hospital transfers, but they need to understand this in a way that aligns with their own priorities and operations.Two recent initiatives have provided education, resources, and peer learning to groups of long-term care providers, to expedite the integration of palliative care in long-term care settings. One learning collaborative was led by a local health system aiming to improve outcomes for patients in their community, and one was led by a national organization to improve end-of-life experiences in Programs of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) nationwide. Common to both efforts was targeted education, focused on proactively identifying people in need of palliative care and how to incorporate this identification into existing workflows; holding effective goals of care and advance care planning conversations; managing physical and psychosocial symptoms; and facilitating referral to palliative care specialty teams or hospice, as appropriate. Note that creating a strong identification process can be instrumental in ensuring equitable access to palliative care for all populations, especially Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.This session shares the lessons learned from these two initiatives, providing insights for both hospital-based and hospice-based palliative care programs to bolster capabilities as well as timely referrals from the long-term care organizations in their own communities. The session ends with an exercise to help attendees devise their own efforts.