Did Your State Make the Grade?
Did Your State Make the Grade?
By Lisa Morgan
Palliative care, also known as palliative medicine, is specialized medical care that focuses on relief from the symptoms, pain and stress of serious illness. Appropriate at any age and at any stage of a serious illness, it is provided at the same time as all other treatments.
Palliative care is growing rapidly in the US as more and more people see the potential of palliative care to improve quality of care and quality of life. But getting palliative care is easier in some states than others.
A new report card, America’s Care of Serious Illness: 2019 State-by-State Report Card on Access to Palliative Care in Our Nation’s Hospitals, was recently released on Capitol Hill. It shows that access to palliative care continues to be more about where you live than about what people living with a serious illness and their families need. This affects 12 million adults and 400,000 children living with a serious illness, such as cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, or dementia.
According to the new report conducted by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) and National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC), the U.S. shows:
- Three quarters of states now have a grade of A or B. The number of states with an A (more than 80 percent of the state’s hospitals have a palliative care team).
- Hospital palliative care for people living in rural America remains limited. Ninety percent of hospitals with palliative care are in urban (city) areas.
Did your state make the grade? These states got an A:
- Connecticut
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Minnesota
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- South Dakota
- Utah
- Vermont
- Washington
- Wisconsin
Learn more at https://reportcard.capc.org/. Visit the Provider Directory to find palliative care in your area.
Lisa D. Morgan is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).
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