Community-Based Palliative Care Guidelines Project Awarded $753,000 Grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation has been awarded a $753,000, two-year grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support the efforts of the National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care (Coalition) to establish community-based practice guidelines for palliative care. This grant will support a stakeholder summit and the development, endorsement, dissemination, and guideline implementation, modeled on the success and strategies of the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care's earlier Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, 2013.

"We are grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for funding this project. The National Consensus Project: Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care have served as a key resource in the field since 2004. This new project will allow us to expand the scope and reach of the initial guidelines to impact the delivery and integration of palliative care in the community setting." – Sally Welsh, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, Chief Executive Officer, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation.

The project goal is to ensure that national practice guidelines formalize and delineate provision of quality community-based palliative care delivery for adults, children, and families living with serious and/or chronic progressive illness to safely and reliably meet their supportive care needs where they live.

A Project Steering Committee will be established and will include representatives from key stakeholder organizations from various disciplines and settings. The Steering Committee will spearhead the project, starting with the planning and convening of a stakeholder summit in 2017. The writing of community-based practice guidelines will also commence in 2017 with stakeholder endorsement and guideline dissemination and implementation occurring in 2018.

Development and deployment of the new consensus-driven practice guidelines for community-based palliative care will hold all practitioners to quality standards that delineate optimal practice, promote value, and enable outcomes measurement in these settings.

"People with serious illness deserve the highest-quality palliative care – these guidelines, once finalized, will help ensure that standards exist to protect the most vulnerable among us, so that they can be assured that wherever they receive palliative care – at home, community clinic, nursing home, or assisted living facility, that these standards exist and are being utilized." – Amy Melnick, MPA, Executive Director, National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care.

About the Moore Foundation 
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements, and preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit www.Moore.org and follow @MooreFound.

About the Coalition
The Coalition includes the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Association of Professional Chaplains, Center to Advance Palliative Care, Health Care Chaplaincy Network, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, National Palliative Care Research Center, and Social Worker Hospice and Palliative Care Network.

Harry Crytzer, 412.282.8209, [email protected] 
Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation

Amy Melnick, MPA, 202.306.3590, [email protected] 
National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care

SOURCE Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation