Rural Community-based Palliative Care

Recognizing that best practices and delivery models for palliative care were originally designed for large urban hospitals, since 2008 Stratis Health has pioneered processes for establishing and delivering palliative care services in rural communities.

People in rural communities often enjoy the benefit of long-standing social networks, but tend to be older, sicker, and poorer than people in urban areas and lack ready access to high-quality, patient-centered, coordinated care and support. Palliative care helps individuals, families, clinicians, and communities who are dealing with serious illness by preventing and relieving physical and mental stress and suffering.

Most recently, Stratis Health has been working in North Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin to support the development of palliative care services in rural communities in each of these states by using evidence-based community-capacity building strategies to activate a broad range of stakeholders and leverage existing local resources. This approach strengthens communities and builds long-term sustainability by enhancing relationships and building local leadership skills.

Stratis Health has also continued to support the development and enhancement of services in Minnesota, building on more than a decade of work with more than 20 rural communities.

Actions

• Develop skills and capacity among the State Offices of Rural Health in North Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin to increase access to palliative care services in rural communities by using a community-capacity-based development approach and implementing it in 5-7 rural communities in each state
• Create a blueprint to understand financing and potential sustainability strategies for the implementation of rural community-based palliative care services to help overcome reimbursement barriers
• Provide tools and resources to support ongoing rural program development, including implementation of a palliative care-focused Project ECHO, and supporting an online resource center targeted at rural communities

We make lives better by…

Increasing access to high-quality, patient-centered, coordinated serious illness care and support for patients and caregivers in rural communities:

• Building capacity at a state and community level for developing and delivering rural community-based palliative care services
• Developing and providing actionable tools and resources to assist rural programs in the development of clinical skills, process workflows, and meaningful collaborations
• Sustainability strategies for building and expanding palliative care services

Contact

Karla Weng
Senior Program Manager
952-853-8570

Janelle Shearer
Program Manager
952-853-8553