Too many Americans with serious, life-limiting illnesses receive care that fails to address their pain, emotions, and spirituality. As documented in CHCF’s 2012 survey, most Californians would prefer to die a natural death at home without becoming a burden on family, yet too often, what they want isn’t what occurs.

Palliative care programs can help address the needs of seriously ill patients and their families. Despite widespread availability of hospital palliative care programs, similar services outside the hospital are very limited. CHCF aimed to bolster the availability of community-based palliative care with the Palliative Care Action Community (PCAC), a structured way to share approaches and lessons learned as organizations worked to develop, implement, expand, and evaluate palliative care services delivered in a community setting.

A one-year learning collaborative, PCAC supported and strengthened participants’ existing efforts to build effective, sustainable community-based palliative care (CBPC) services in California. Participants had opportunities to share implementation strategies, experiences with different clinical models, and outcomes with peers who have a mutual vision of increasing access to quality CBPC.

These Palliative Care Action Community members were selected through a request for applications (RFA) process in early 2013:

• Annadel Medical Group — St. Joseph Health (Santa Rosa)
• Community Hospice (Modesto)
• Community Memorial Hospital (Ventura)
• Hoag Hospital (Newport Beach)
• Huntington Hospital (Pasadena)
• Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region (Northern CA)
• Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center (Harbor City)
• Kaweah Delta Health Care District (Visalia)
• Marian Cancer Care (Santa Maria)
• Motion Picture and Television Fund (Woodland Hills)
• Olive View — UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles)
• Optum Palliative Care and Hospice Care (Santa Ana)
• Palliative Partners (Riverside)
• Palo Alto Medical Foundation (Santa Cruz)
• Palliative Care Center Silicon Valley (San Jose)
• Partners in Care of El Dorado County (Placerville)
• Saddleback Coordinated Home Care (Laguna Hills)
• Sharp HealthCare (San Diego)
• Stanford Health Care (Palo Alto)
• Sutter Health — Sutter Care at Home (Northern CA)
• University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco)

For more information, see the project summary under Document Downloads.

After the initiative ended, the knowledge gained was compiled to produce Up Close: A Field Guide to Community-Based Palliative Care in California.