Report: R.I. receives A grade for palliative care access

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island received a grade of A in a report card showing the best and worst states for providing access to palliative care.
The Ocean State ranked fifth best in the country overall, tying with South Dakota and Oregon with a score of 88.9, 100 being the highest.
New Hampshire, Vermont and Montana all received scores of 100, while Washington was second at 92.7, Nevada third at 91.7 and New Jersey fourth at 91.2.
The report, America’s Care of Serious Illness: 2015 State-by-State Report Card on Access to Palliative Care in Our Nation’s Hospitals, released this week, found that access to palliative care is variable and depends more on geography.
For example, it said that millions of seriously ill Americans and their families living in the South, as well as in Alaska, Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming, still have inadequate access to palliative care teams.
Palliative care focuses on maximizing quality of life during serious illness through relief of pain, symptoms and stress that patients and families usually experience.
The report said that in a sign of progress, 17 states received a grade of A compared with three in the 2008 report and seven in the 2011 report.

In addition to the previously mentioned states that received scores of 91.2 or higher, other states earning A grades in the latest report were: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin.

The overall grade for the United States in 2015 was a B, unchanged from 2011, the report said.

“It is our hope that this report card focuses attention on lingering gaps in access to palliative care in our nation’s hospitals,” Dr. Diane E. Meier, the Center to Advance Palliative Care director, said in a statement. “Palliative care, like any core medical service such as ICUs or emergency departments, should be available in all U.S. hospitals.”

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Dr. R. Sean Morrison, director of the National Palliative Care Research Center, said, “The dramatic growth in the number of hospitals with palliative care teams is encouraging. Whereas we need to continue to assist hospitals in C and D states, it is important to focus attention on ensuring that all seriously ill patients actually receive it in a timely fashion, and that access moves beyond hospitals to other sites of care.”

Barriers to palliative care access remain in three key areas: workforce, research and payment models linked to quality measures, the report said.
The report was conducted by the Center to Advance Palliative Care and National Palliative Care Research Center.
Report highlights include:

  • Overall, the Southern U.S states received a grade of C (60 percent or fewer hospitals have palliative care teams) as compared with As and Bs (60 percent or more hospitals) for all other regions.
  • States receiving a D grade (40 percent or less of hospitals having palliative care) were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming.
  • Twenty-three percent of for-profit hospitals have palliative care. Nonprofit hospitals are seven times more likely to have a palliative care team than for-profits.
  • Ninety percent of hospitals with 300 beds or more have palliative care teams.

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