Would My Patient Benefit from Palliative Care?
Talbot Palliative Care is a community home-based palliative care service. Palliative care is specialized medical care for individuals with chronic, serious illness and those who care for them. Talbot Palliative Care provides consultative services and clinical oversight of an individual's care and works with community providers to manage symptoms and offer emotional support for caregivers. Palliative care can be provided in conjunction with home health services and other treatment plans regardless of the patient's diagnosis, prognosis, or age. Talbot Palliative Care focuses on symptom management, psycholsocial-spiritual support, and facilitation of medical decision making.
Palliative Services Include:
- Consultative services and treatment recommendations for
- Pain & Symptom Management
- Medication Management & Education
- Nausea/Vomiting, Loss of Appetite and constipation
- Fatigue and sleep disorders
- Pharmacological and non-pharmacological recommendations
- Education related to symptom management and disease process
- End-of-life discussions and advanced care planning
- Social assessment and support
- Interdisciplinary team expertise for plan of care discussions and development that involves the patient, family and community practitioner
Target Population
1. Patients with Cancer, CHF, COPD, renal failure, liver disease, Alzheimer’s/Dementia, and other chronic conditions
2. Patients with a serious illness AND
- Frequent ER visits or hospitalizations
- Uncontrolled physical or emotional symptoms
- Difficulty with accessing office-based care
- Uncertainty about goals of care and/or caregiver distress
- Inability or difficulty keeping office appointments
- One or more complications from condition(s)
3. Patients residing in Assisted Living or Nursing Facilities
Benefits of Referring to Talbot Palliative Care
- Experts in palliative and symptom management
- Collaborative recommendations with community provider – the patient remains your patient
- Improved quality of life
- Palliative consultations in the patient’s own home, including long-term care and assisted living facilities
- Improved transitions and coordination of care with community services
- Assess home hazards & social determinants of health
- Appropriate at any age and at any stage of illness
- Reduce hospital readmissions and emergency room visits
- Palliative care utilized with traditional or curative treatment
- Support frontline physicians by devoting time to intensive family meetings and patient/family counseling and education
- Multidisciplinary approach to address symptoms
