Safety-Net and Rural Care
Palliative care programs in rural and safety-net organizations often serve patients with intense needs, and face considerable resource constraints. Use these tools to optimize available resources, and to better balance demand with capacity.
What’s in the Toolkit
Garnering Resources for Sustaining or Growing a Program
With budgets tight, teams can employ these best-practice billing, negotiating, and fundraising strategies to secure additional resources.
An overview of difficulties encountered by patients with serious illness in rural communities and the palliative care teams trying to help (Huff C).
Toolkit with billing and coding best practices for palliative care services delivered in the hospital or the community.
2024 at-a-glance listing of all wRVUs relevant to palliative care.
In this Virtual Office Hour, expert faculty will explore commonly asked inpatient palliative care billing questions and describe billing and coding practices.
Officers from national and local foundations share their insight and advice on finding, approaching, and working with funders.
An at-a-glance overview of best practices in proposal preparation
Downloadable spreadsheet with embedded calculations that allow the user to input their actual salary costs and billing mix to calculate the financial impact specific to each program. Includes comparisons to key national averages.
340b is a federal pharmacy funding program. Check with your organization's pharmacy leadership to ensure inclusion, and prioritize palliative care medications.
Tips for how to get your palliative care program off the chopping block when your organization is thinking conservatively and looking to cut costs.
Financial blueprint for supporting rural services. Stratis Health.
This Virtual Office Hour explores best practices in evaluating your program and engaging collaborators.
Targeting and Prioritizing Patient Encounters
Tools to help triage palliative care expertise to deliver the most impact and best outcomes.
Checklist of triggers for referral to a specialty palliative care team.
NEJM Catalyst article describing UPMC's EHR-trigger for intermediate and high-risk patients. While they used an AI algorithm, simpler triggers based on LACE or Charlson can be used for the same process.
Predicts risk of death within one year of hospitalization. Used by home-based palliative care programs to identify patients for enrollment.
How palliative care program leaders throughout the country have creatively and effectively responded to an increased demand for consults.
Guidance on dosing interventions allocating visit frequency based on patient risk.
Equipping Your Colleagues to Meet Basic Palliative Needs
As palliative care teams focus on the most complex needs, use these resources to equip other teams to deliver 'primary palliative care'.
Tools to design and implement a training initiative for care teams from all specialties, to improve quality of life for patients and families living with serious illness.
Conversation map with specific phrases to use when talking to patients about their goals of care.
Assesses for nine symptoms experienced by patients with serious illness and quantifies their severity. Alberta Health Services.
An expert provides background on trauma-informed care, explains the markers of trauma, and provides guidance on screening.
Leadership
Rural and safety-net professionals can hone their creativity and leadership skills to best meet current and future challenges.
This on demand webinar, I Was Never Taught These Things: Perspectives from Leaders on Program Development, is designed to help palliative care leaders navigate leadership challenges.
This on-demand webinar discusses leadership skills for running a successful palliative care program. Learn more from the Center to Advance Palliative Care.
In this Virtual Office Hour, ask questions about serving patients in rural and safety-net organizations, including garnering resources, defining your target population, celebrating wins, and more.
Creative and practical strategies for operating palliative care programs in the health care safety net.
Resources for improving team health and tools to help clinicians cope with moral distress, grief, and trauma.
Use this toolkit to learn the issues and opportunities, explore recent state initiatives, and access guidance on implementation.
Faculty
