Tools for Making the Case
The evidence is clear: palliative care improves quality of life for patients—and quality outcomes for health care organizations—resulting in consistent reductions in the costs of care.
Designed to help make the case with organization leaders, health plans, colleagues, and community partners, the materials in this toolkit can be used to make the case for palliative care investment in your setting. To help estimate the value of your hospital palliative care program, try our interactive Hospital Impact Calculator.
What’s in the Toolkit
Defining Palliative Care
Market-tested definition of palliative care and quality guidelines for a palliative care program in any care setting.
Definition of palliative care and how it improves quality of life for patients living with a serious illness, and their families.
The National Consensus Project (NCP) Clinical Practice Guidelines are the national standard for high quality palliative care. National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care, 2018.
Palliative Care Value Across Settings
One-pagers, brochures, and case studies on the quality and cost impact of palliative care.
One-page infographic to introduce your organization leaders, referrers, and health plans to the quality, satisfaction, and utilization improvements resulting from palliative care.
This publication includes key messages for health system leaders about the value of hospital palliative care, applicable across settings.
In addition to improving quality of care for people living with serious illness, robust palliative care services lead to strong financial performance across many parameters.
The majority of people with serious illness are neither dying nor hospitalized. So, palliative care needs to be available in all settings outside hospitals—in medical offices and clinics, in post-acute and long-term care facilities, and in patient homes. This publication includes key data on the value of community palliative care, program profiles, and a case example to use with leadership.
Slide presentation on the value of pediatric palliative care includes action steps to support pediatric palliative care integration with disease treatment across the continuum.
This publication makes the case for training both palliative care and nonpalliative care specialists in communication and symptom management skills. Training in these skills results in measurably better quality of care, improved patient and family experience, and more time spent at home and out of hospitals.
One-page infographic to introduce your organization leaders, referrers, and health plans to the quality, satisfaction, and utilization improvements resulting from palliative care.
A summary of implementation best practices for health plans and ACOs driving value in the care of high-need, seriously ill populations.
Calculators, Templates, and Case Studies
Pitch decks, national data, and effective presentation strategies.
Free, interactive tool to help you estimate savings attributable to your hospital palliative care team.
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.
Customizable template for making the case for reliable availability of palliative care. Center to Advance Palliative Care, 2019.
This document provides tips for making the case to the C-suite to support a community-based palliative care (CBPC) program.
A template presentation to introduce your services, their benefits, and your "ask" for support.
A streamlined calculator for modeling return on investment based on home-based palliative care program assumptions.
Tips for how to get your palliative care program off the chopping block when your organization is thinking conservatively and looking to cut costs.
Demonstrating value to leadership in a large health system with references to cost savings and metrics for providers and payers. Presenter: Thomas J. Smith, MD, FACP, FASCO, FAAHPM March 2017.
ProHealth, a multi-specialty physician practice ACO, uses home palliative care for high-need patients.
Sharp Healthcare, an integrated network of hospitals and clinicians, incorporates a home palliative care intervention to meet the needs of complex patients.
Trinity Health's journey to expand access to specialty palliative care across settings, and train all clinicians to identify and address sources of suffering for patients with serious illness.
In this on demand webinar, Using Palliative Care to Improve Quality of Life and Financial Performance, hear from leaders across the country as they describe their palliative care strategies.
