Overview
- Identifies role of palliative care in improving quality andreducing costs across a range of health care settings and organizations
- Prioritizes policy changes necessary to standardize access to quality palliative care
- Connects new delivery and payment incentives under the ACA to opportunities for growth in palliative care services
Part of the book series: Aging Medicine (AGME)
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Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Current Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness
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Front Matter
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Settings for the Care of the Seriously Ill
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Front Matter
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Measuring Quality and Paying for the Care of the Seriously Ill
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Front Matter
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Platforms for Improvement
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
Meeting the Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Health Care Reform provides an introduction to the principles of palliative care; describes current models of delivering palliative care across care settings, and examines opportunities in the setting of healthcare policy reform for palliative care to improve outcomes for patients, families and healthcare institutions. The United States is currently facing a crisis in health care marked by unsustainable spending and quality that is poor relative to international benchmarks. Yet this is also a critical time of opportunity. Because of its focus on quality of care, the Affordable Care Act is poised to expand access to palliative care services for the sickest, most vulnerable, and therefore most costly, 5% of patients- a small group who nonetheless drive about 50% of all healthcare spending. Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses. It focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness—whatever the diagnosis or stage of illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Research has demonstrated palliative care’s positive impact on health care value. Patients (and family caregivers) receiving palliative care experience improved quality of life, better symptom management, lower rates of depression and anxiety, and improved survival. Because patient and family needs are met, crises are prevented, thereby directly reducing need for emergency department and hospital use and their associated costs. An epiphenomenon of better quality of care, the lower costs associated with palliative care have been observed in multiple studies.
Meeting the Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Health Care Reform, a roadmap for effective policy and program design, brings together expertclinicians, researchers and policy leaders, who tackle key areas where real-world policy options to improve access to quality palliative care could have a substantial role in improving value.
Reviews
From the book reviews:
“This introduction to palliative care describes current models of delivering palliative care across care settings and explores opportunities in the setting of healthcare policy reform for palliative care to improve outcomes for patients, families, and healthcare institutions. … It is a roadmap for policy and program design, and is therefore a useful resource for policymakers and healthcare administrators. … This is an excellent resource and guidebook for those looking to improve palliative care in the future.” (Darrell A. Owens, Doody’s Book Reviews, September, 2014)Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Amy S. Kelley, MD MSHS
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, New York, NY, USA
Diane E. Meier, MD
Director, Center to Advance Palliative Care, Professor and Vice-chair for Public Policy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, New York, NY, USA
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Meeting the Needs of Older Adults with Serious Illness
Book Subtitle: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Health Care Reform
Editors: Amy S. Kelley, Diane E. Meier
Series Title: Aging Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0407-5
Publisher: Humana New York, NY
eBook Packages: Medicine, Medicine (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4939-0406-8Published: 02 September 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4939-0407-5Published: 01 September 2014
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 240
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour
Topics: Geriatrics/Gerontology, General Practice / Family Medicine, Primary Care Medicine, Medicine/Public Health, general, Pain Medicine