Advanced Illness Management Strategies - Part 2

In 2012, the AHA Committee on Performance Improvement commissioned a pair of reports on advanced illness management, or AIM. Together these reports frame AIM as a four-phase process and focus on three strategies—access, awareness and workforce—to deliver and support high-quality and well-coordinated advanced illness care to patients and their families.

Three Key AIM Strategies

This second report, Advanced Illness Management Strategies: Engaging the Community and a Ready, Willing and Able Workforce, expands and explains all three strategies and focuses on patient and community awareness and engagement and a ready, willing and able workforce.

Awareness: Communitywide strategies can significantly raise patient and family awareness in advanced illness planning and management. Appreciating the benefits and partnering with advanced illness programs sooner rather than later can make the utmost difference between “dying well” and “dying badly” and should be the draw to managing advanced illness and engaging with one’s mortality.

Workforce: The success of AIM programs is contingent upon the education and training of health care providers as the demand grows for managing multiple chronic conditions, as well as for palliative and end-of-life care. There are not enough health care professionals who are ready, willing and able to manage advanced illness with patients and their families, and there is a constant need to engage in conversations and provide guidance to more expert resources.

The first CPI report, Advanced Illness Management Strategies Part 1, examines in depth how hospitals can increase access to AIM programs. To access this report, go to http://www.aha.org/aim-strategies.shtml