The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations Award
Important Palliative Care Grant to
HealthCare Chaplaincy

Helps establish the first medical sub-specialty for chaplains

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations have awarded HealthCare Chaplaincy a $190,000 grant to help establish the first medical subspecialty training program for chaplains in the growing field of palliative care.

The grant will partially fund the development and field test a set of palliative chaplaincy care competencies and a curriculum which will then be recommended to the Association of Professional Chaplains and its affiliate, the Board of Chaplaincy Certification, Inc. for their review and implementation.

When approved, this will be the first sub-specialty certification granted by any chaplaincy credentialing body.

This initiative will provide professional chaplains with skills, beyond those acquired in their already-rigorous training, that they need to deal competently with the challenges of modern palliative care delivery in acute care hospitals, assisted living, hospice programs and other outpatient settings.

As the nation’s only organization that engages in clinical practice, education and research in professional chaplaincy care, HealthCare Chaplaincy has a unique combination of resources to carry out this project.

This was emphasized by Cheryl Tupper, program director for religion and health care, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, who said, "The Foundations are pleased to support this groundbreaking effort to advance the specialized training of chaplains. We believe that chaplains are critical to providing the highest level of patient care and, under the leadership of HealthCare Chaplaincy, this project will advance the special role chaplains play in the care of those facing very difficult medical situations."

We thank the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations for their visionary and generous support with the award of this grant.

Palliative Care Can Improve Care and
Reduce Medicaid Costs, Study Shows

“Palliative care teams can reduce Medicaid expenditures while ensuring that people get more high-quality care that is also consistent with their goals,” said R. Sean Morrison, M.D., director of the National Palliative Care Research Center, and lead author of a new study published in Health Affairs.

The study finds Medicaid beneficiaries receiving palliative care show significantly lower hospital costs while getting an extra layer of medical support. The palliative care they received resulted in increased communication, care planning guidance, discharge planning and pain and symptom management. The Center to Advance Palliative Care points out that with the aging of the population, especially the baby boomers, hospitals are caring for an increasing number of patients with serious and advanced illnesses. Palliative care can improve the quality of life for these patients and reduce the number of days in intensive care.

The Center to Advance Palliative Care is a national organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality palliative care services for people facing serious illness. The National Palliative Care Research Center is committed to stimulating, developing, and funding research directed at improving care for seriously ill patients and their families.

Both are located at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and both collaborate with HealthCare Chaplaincy as a leader in the field of spirit-centered palliative care.

For more about this important study, click the links below.

http://www.capc.org/news-and-events/releases/03-08-11

http://www.annals.org/content/154/4/235.abstract?aimhp

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/3/454.abstract

Meet Extraordinary Patient Care Honoree
Barrie J. Huberman

Our annual Wholeness of Life Awards dinner on November 4th featured the patient care honorees from the metropolitan New York health care institutions where we manage, staff, and operate board certified chaplaincy services.

Each honoree is chosen by his or her peers as an exemplar of patient-centered care.

Each issue of HealthCare Chaplaincy Today is profiling one honoree.

Today meet Barrie Huberman, PhD, Chief, Behavioral Medicine & Director of Clinical Ethics, Lenox Hill. From the citation read at the award ceremony at the hospital, here’s what her colleagues say about her:

Barrie, as Director of Clinical Ethics at Lenox Hill Hospital, you have been called the hospital’s secret weapon when it comes to dealing with difficult situations.

You are the great defender of the patient, sensitive to the specific religious and spiritual context of each circumstance, always striving to accommodate the belief systems of the parties involved.

House staff, nursing staff, social workers, attending staff and administrators all reach out to you for your assistance. You are trusted by all as a confident and a counselor, someone who can heal broken relationships when communication becomes tense and difficult.

You combine a brilliant head with the warmest of hearts. It’s safe to say that if there is a soul of Lenox Hill Hospital, you are that soul.

Follow us and join the conversations on spirit –centered palliative care.