Northwest Life Passages Community Conversations: Outpatient Palliative Care

The Palliative Care Institute and the Northwest Life Passages Coalition invites you to participate in a community discussion about successes and challenges of Outpatient Palliative Care initiatives in our community.

In 2014, a community task force wrote a Blueprint that outlines steps we need to take to make Whatcom County a community of excellence for those with serious illness or facing death and their families.  This Blueprint has 5 pillars:  Advance Care Planning, Clinical Care, Provider Education, Community Education and Activation and Policy/Sustainability. 

The Northwest Life Passages Coalition has been given the responsibility of helping to implement this Blueprint.  As part of that goal, we are hosting community conversations about each pillar. Our intent is to share the progress that has been made, the challenges we still face and to listen to your ideas and concerns.

At this session, we will briefly share the current status of Outpatient Palliative Care as part of the Clinical Care pillar in our community and outline some new initiatives and challenges that still need to be addressed.  We hope to spend the bulk of the session exploring your ideas and concerns so that we can continue to make progress toward our goal of building a robust outpatient palliative care option for those in our community facing serious illness or death. 

Some possible topics we might explore together include:

What are challenges have you faced in accessing outpatient palliative care?

What are your concerns about outpatient palliative care, and what do you need for us to do this work better?

What creative ideas might you have for addressing the current constraints?