Investing in Palliative Care Earlier Across All Settings to Enhance Customer Experience and Quality (23H)

Early access to quality palliative care is now recommended for those with serious illness, such cancer and heart failure. As studies and practice continue to demonstrate that earlier access to quality palliative care reduces suffering, improves quality of life, and reduces unnecessary and often unwanted healthcare services, health systems, payers and community-based practices are investing in palliative care in hospital, emergency department, clinic and home-based settings, as well as through telehealth. This session will provide an overview of what defines quality palliative care; approaches to designing a palliative care program across all settings; and the financial, patient experience and quality outcomes that make the case for building or expanding access to palliative care. Specific program designs for delivering tele-palliative care and palliative care in the emergency department will be shared and discussed.