AHA and the Center to Advance Palliative Care Partner To Deliver Higher Value Care for Patients with Serious Illness

September 5, 2018 - Population health and palliative care are two disciplines that bring new ways of thinking about health and illness. While they play distinct roles, they both promote optimal wellbeing.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) announced today a strategic partnership to help improve patient care for people living with serious illness by integrating the two disciplines. The goal is to grow access to palliative care and adoption of a population health approach for these patients. Well-coordinated collaboration across population health and palliative care teams will lead to greater efficiencies, lower costs and higher quality of care.

The AHA and CAPC partnership will enable the development and dissemination of tools, training curricula, and support to providers across the country. These resources will focus on patient identification; care pathways tailored to the needs of patients with serious illnesses; seamless care delivery across care settings; improved communication; and pain-and-symptom management training. Emphasis will be placed on alignment with value-based payment models. 

“CAPC and AHA share the goal of helping US health systems improve the quality of life and reduce the suffering of patients and families we serve. We can do this by improving care for patients with serious illness – across all care settings,” said Diane E. Meier, MD, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care. “A large and growing evidence base shows that access to high quality palliative care is aligned with health systems’ urgent need to improve quality while maintaining efficiency when caring for their sickest, and often costliest, patients.”

Palliative care has been shown to improve care quality - thereby reducing costs. It can reduce the length of patient stays and 30-day readmissions. Incorporating the psychosocial aspects of palliative care eases the emotional burden on patients and their families, and improves satisfaction of care.

“Our partnership with CAPC and strategic use of our combined expertise, resources and influence will improve the overall care of people with serious illness by creating a more personalized approach to care, ” said Jay Bhatt, DO, AHA senior vice president and chief medical officer. “It acknowledges the importance of people getting the right care, at the right time, in the right setting from the right caregiver.”

Contact:        

Marie Johnson, (202) 626-2351 mjohnson@aha.org

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About AHA

The AHA is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. The AHA is the national advocate for its members, which include nearly 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks, other providers of care and 43,000 individual members. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit the AHA website at www.aha.org.

About CAPC

The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality palliative care services for people living with serious illness. CAPC provides health care professionals with the training, tools, and technical assistance necessary to redesign care systems that effectively meet this need. CAPC is funded through membership and the generous support of foundations and private philanthropy. Technical assistance is provided by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.

For more information, visit capc.org.