Eight Rural Minnesota Communities to Build Palliative Care Programs

Published Monday, January 23, 2012

Eight rural Minnesota communities have been selected to participate in Stratis Health's new Rural Palliative Care Community Development Project to establish or strengthen palliative care programs in their communities. Over 40 organizations will be working together to enhance care delivery in their communities. Each community will receive one-on-one foundational support and technical assistance in this two-year project being led by Stratis Health, with funding support from UCare.

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

• Albert Lea/Austin
• Cloquet/Carlton County: Community Memorial Hospital Association
• Dawson Minnesota: Johnson Memorial Homecare
• Kenyon: Kenyon Senior Living
• Madelia Community Hospital & Clinic Service Area: Madelia Community Hospital
• Madison: Madison Hospital Home Care Agency
• Moose Lake: Mercy Hospital
• Virginia: Essentia Health East Range Hospice

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.

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.

"With chronic diseases as a leading cause of death and disability in Minnesota, our health care services need to evolve to provide appropriate care. We need treatment plans tailored to each patient's goals and new delivery methods that cross multiple health care settings," said Jennifer Lundblad, PhD, MBA, president and CEO, Stratis Health. "By fostering palliative care in rural communities we hope 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.

"Having worked with nearly 20 rural communities on palliative care, we've seen that there's no best model for providing these services in rural communities. Rural communities are resourceful in finding creative ways to serve patients with chronic disease and other serious illness," said Lundblad.

More on rural palliative care >

Updated January 31, 2012 to add an eighth community.