Six Rural Minnesota Communities to Build Palliative Care Programs

Published Monday, June 28, 2010

Six rural Minnesota communities have been selected to participate in Stratis Health’s Rural Palliative Care Community Development Project to establish or strengthen palliative care programs in their communities. Each community will receive one-on-one foundational support and technical assistance. This 10-month project is being led by Stratis Health, in partnership with Fairview Health Services Palliative Care Program.

The community teams chosen for this initiative and their lead organizations are:

• Detroit Lakes Area, Becker County: Emmanuel Nursing Home
• Fosston, FirstCare Medical Services Home Health and Hospice
• Kanabec County: Kanabec County Hospital
• Palliative Care Partners of Cook County: Cook County North Shore Hospital
• Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians: Red Lake Hospital – Indian Health Service
• Yellow Medicine and Chippewa Counties: Granite Falls Hospital, Manor and Home Care

Seven out of 10 Americans who die each year die of a chronic disease. Palliative care is an approach to managing chronic disease and other serious and advanced illness that centers on relieving suffering and improving quality of life for patients and their families. Palliative care customizes treatment to meet the needs of each individual, seeking to relieve pain, anxiety, shortness of breath, fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite and other symptoms and to provide emotional and spiritual support. It differs from hospice in that it is appropriate at any point in a serious illness and can be provided at the same time as curative treatment.

Palliative care programs help patients better manage their symptoms, improve satisfaction with the family-clinician relationships, decrease problems with transitions between health care providers—such as when patients move from hospitals to nursing homes or from nursing homes to receiving care at home from a home health agency.

Of the six participating communities, four have no program and two are in the early phases of forming their programs. Participants in the project include community teams of interdisciplinary representatives from rural hospitals, clinics, home health agencies, nursing homes, hospice programs, and other community organizations.

“There’s no best model for providing these services in rural communities. Our work with palliative care is revealing the creativity in rural communities to serve patients with chronic disease and other serious illness,” said Jennifer Lundblad, PhD, MBA, president and CEO, Stratis Health. “We want to decrease the number of patients having to leave their home community to receive this patient-centered care.”

Although rural areas may lack financing and medical professionals trained in palliative care, they excel compared to urban areas for having smaller bureaucracies, closer inter-personal relationships, a greater primary care emphasis, and greater opportunities for collaborative practice across care settings—all advantages for supporting palliative care services.

This project follows Stratis Health’s successful Minnesota Rural Palliative Care Initiative, through which 10 rural Minnesota communities were provided similar support and assistance. Six of the 10 communities are currently providing palliative care services. The other four are focusing their efforts on standing orders, advanced care planning, and education to health care professionals and the community—all components that build a foundation for palliative care services.

Stratis Health’s two rural palliative care development projects were made possible by funds provided by UCare. Its funding also is supporting the development of a publicly available online resource center aimed at fostering palliative care in rural communities. Many resources are available on palliative care, but this will be the first Web site to focus on palliative care to meet the unique needs of rural communities. Stratis Health will build this site on the evidence-based, actionable resources gathered for the communities in its Minnesota Rural Palliative Care Initiative.

List of participating organizations >

UCare is an independent, nonprofit health plan providing health care and administrative services to more than 200,000 members.