Health Care Reform
Health Care Chaplaincy is actively engaged in the national health care reform dialogue in the field of palliative care:
Palliative Care: HealthCare Chaplaincy Responds to Senate Finance Committee
The Senate Finance Committee invited public comment on the report it released on April 19, 2009 —"Transforming the Health Care Delivery System: Proposals to Improve Patient Care and Reduce Health Care Costs." HealthCare Chaplaincy submitted a response jointly with three other leading organizations—The George Washington Institute for Spirituality & Health, the Association of Professional Chaplains, and the City of Hope National Medical Center.
The response says, "The palliative care model and its emphasis on interdisciplinary teams, and patient-centered care (including the recognition of spiritual needs), provides a powerful model which can serve to address many of the health care policy goals set forth in the Senate’s report on health care."
It recommends:
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Palliative Care be included in the health care reform legislation as a recommended model for delivering chronic care and managing chronic care patients during acute care admissions and after discharge from acute care settings. Palliative care or home-based teams would coordinate care for the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of the patient’s care and would include professionals qualified in each area.
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Palliative care must include attention to spiritual, religious, and existential aspects of care as consistent with the National Consensus Project for Palliative Care Guidelines and National Quality Forum for Preferred Practices and that care should be provided by the interdisciplinary health care professionals including a board certified chaplain.
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Demonstration project to test the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams with palliative care training for chronically ill patients in acute care settings with the goal of producing more coordinated, lower cost, and higher quality care with reduced readmissions. The teams would include a physician, a nurse, a case manager, and a board certified chaplain. Spiritual issues of healthcare professionals should be attended to as a way of improving workplace stress management and team cohesiveness.
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Demonstration projects to test the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams with palliative care training to manage chronic patients at home. The goal would be to manage all aspects of the patient and family needs in such a way that readmission was delayed or avoided.
The entire response is at http://www.gwish.org/
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