Community-Based Palliative Care Program Design
This self-directed, self-paced learning activity provides foundational concepts for successfully building, growing, or redesigning palliative care programs in home, office, or long-term care settings. It is intended for individuals or teams that are new to, or in the early stages of, community-based palliative care program design or re-design. Concepts include conducting a needs assessment, building a business plan and budget, determining program staffing, and more.
This learning activity takes approximately 12 hours to complete, and is best done in blocks of time over the course of days or weeks, rather than spread out over months. At the end, you will have the essential information to begin designing a community-based palliative care program, tools to measure your program’s impact, and an outline for how to showcase its value to your stakeholders.
Complete the Learning Activity
Download the Learner’s Guide
This comprehensive Learner’s Guide delivers step-by-step instruction for designing a community-based palliative care program. Each of the 16 sections in the guide includes key concepts of program design, a case study, supplemental tools, and a corresponding worksheet with activities to help you apply the concepts to your program design. The guide is best viewed on a computer or tablet (to access the hyperlinks), or printed.
This Learner’s Guide organizes and structures the Concepts of Community-Based Palliative Care Program Design 101 learning activity. It contains 16 sections that build on each other.
Access the Worksheets
At the end of each section, use the corresponding worksheet to gather information, record reflections, and document ideas about your program. You can use the information in your completed worksheets as a road map for your program’s design. The worksheets are Microsoft Word files, so they are best utilized on a computer, or printed.
Reflect on your understanding of the definition of palliative care and why it matters how others perceive what palliative care is. Describe elements to include in your program’s definition.
Reflect on the core characteristics of community-based palliative care and record key approaches your program should take to operationalize the National Consensus Project’s Domains of Quality Care.
Reflect on the importance of conducting a needs assessment as a first step in planning a program. Assess the types of information you need to collect as part of the assessment, and describe how assessment findings influence your program’s design.
Reflect on and record who your program’s stakeholders are and how their priorities influence your program’s design.
Reflect on the information needed to determine your program’s payment model(s), and record thoughts on how the payment model affects your program’s services and staffing.
Reflect on how your program’s location within the organization influences program design, and review administrative considerations to clarify your program’s relationship with its organizational home.
Record the types of health and social service organizations your program might partner with to ensure the range of expertise and resources necessary to care for your program’s patients, and their caregivers.
Reflect on common models of clinical responsibility in community-based palliative care programs. Record how the models affect the program’s services and staffing.
Reflect on how the proposed venue for your program (home, office, and/or long-term care setting) aligns with the gaps your program is designed to fill. Record operational considerations that emerge based on the program’s venue of care.
Reflect on the types of patients your program will target and how you will convey this information to potential referrers. Record essential elements to include in your referral process.
Record your thoughts on determining your program’s service package, including considerations such as stakeholder priorities, program capacity, patient assessments, administrative and clinical workflows, and transitions of care.
Reflect on skills to consider when hiring and training staff for your community-based palliative care program. Draft a staffing plan that is designed to meet the needs of your program’s patients.
Reflect on potential organizational partners that can assist with developing your program’s budget. Record your business planning assumptions about the program’s patient population, service model, and staffing.
Reflect on factors that influence your business planning process, and identify the tasks needed to complete your business plan.
Reflect on processes for choosing, collecting, and analyzing data to evaluate your program. Identify measures that gauge the program’s response to the needs and priorities of your stakeholders.
Reflect on how to prepare for meeting with your organization’s leadership to justify your program design and garner support. Describe the elements of your program’s elevator speech.
A compilation of worksheets for each section of the Community-Based Palliative Care Program Design 101 learning activity. For learners who prefer to access all 16 worksheets in one file.
Take the Courses
Throughout this learning activity, you will be instructed to complete the following operational courses. They are all listed here for your convenience, but you should only take them when directed. These online courses offer free continuing education credits to CAPC members.
Defining community-based palliative care: which patients need it, how it is delivered, and how it differs from inpatient palliative care.
Evaluating patient need, service requirements, care settings, and stakeholder priorities for the community-based palliative care program.
Designing and implementing an office-based palliative care program, including clinical model and operational considerations.
Translating needs assessment into service design for the community-based palliative care program.
Building a budget and a business plan for the community-based program. Includes business planning tools.
Complete the Evaluation
Please complete our short evaluation after you’ve completed this learning activity. Your feedback is important to us.
Complete this evaluation after finishing the Concepts of Community-Based Palliative Care Program Design self-directed learning activity.
