Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care

Improving access to palliative and end-of-life care

Advances in public health and medicine are allowing people to live longer than ever. Many people live for years—and even decades—with chronic or progressive illness. However, when they do reach the final stages of life, people too often find themselves in settings or receiving care they do not want and that does not reflect their values or preferences. In 2016, The Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with RESOLVE, convened leading care organizations to develop consensus policy recommendations for improving access to palliative care and ensuring that people with serious illness, including those nearing end of life, along with their loved ones, receive care that is accountable, patient centered, and culturally aware.

RESOLVE designed and managed the collaborative process used to achieve consensus on policy recommendations. As a result of this work, participating organizations aligned around a set of consensus recommendations captured in the report Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care: Improving Person-Centered Care for Patients with Serious Illness. These recommendations were issued to the Trump Administration in February 2017. Congressional briefings also were organized on this report and associated recommendations. 

Recommendations in the report included enhancing existing education programs in health professions by providing incentives to incorporate palliative care and hospice training, encouraging physician and interdisciplinary training programs under Graduate Medical Education (GME) to include hospice and palliative care and geriatrics curricula, and enhancing federal research in palliative care and end-of-life care to strengthen clinical practice and health care delivery and yield meaningful evidence for improving patient quality of life.