Policies and Tools for Hospital Palliative Care Programs

Posted by Laurie Blanchard, B.A., MLS in Info Long-Term Care blog From the Center to Advance Palliative Care, (Mount Sinai School of Medicine) this document pulls together preferred practices, tools, web resources, training resources, and family education materials for providing quality palliative care in hospital. In 2006, the National Quality Forum (NQF) issued a report detailing 38 Preferred Practices for Palliative and Hospice Care Quality. NQF used the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care as the starting point for developing Preferred Practices. The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) has developed a document that provides a crosswalk between The Joint Commission standards and palliative care. This document will assist programs in developing the necessary policies and associated clinical tools and resources to ensure that a palliative care program meets the NQF’s Preferred Practices. This document is divided into three sections: I. Index of Preferred Practices, Policies, Tools and Resources II. Sample Policies developed by existing hospital-based palliative care programs.Hospitals can adapt these tools to fit their institutions’ needs. III. Tools/Resources to implement the Preferred Practices. Hospitals can adapt these tools to fit their institutions’ needs. http://www.capc.org/support-from-capc/capc_publications/nqf-crosswalk.pdf