Palliative Care Impact Report

YOUR IMPACT ON OUR PROGRESS

900%

An Update from the University of Colorado Palliative Care Program 2016-2017

INCREASE IN PATIENTS SERVED

THANK YOU!

61

With your generous support over the past year, the University of Colorado Palliative Care Program at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus has expanded its reach in new and important ways. As part of our community of support, you have helped alleviate suffering for more patients and their families, while ensuring that future health professionals gain access to palliative care skills and that new models of care reach more patients more quickly than perhaps ever before.

OVER 3 YEARS AVERAGE PATIENT AGE

MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S.

COULD BENEFIT FROM

PALLIATIVE CARE

In this update, we have highlighted just some of the many ways your support has propelled our efforts in clinical care, education and research. By investing in the CU Palliative Care Program, you are investing in a brighter future for countless patients with progressive and advanced illnesses, along with their families and caregivers.

-Jean Kutner, MD, MPSH

Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine Chief Medical Officer, University of Colorado Hospital

Reaching More Patients and Families Your support helps us reach more patients and their loved ones each year. We served 135 new patient visits in the Outpatient Palliative Care Clinic last year – an increase of more than 40 percent. New patient visits to the inpatient Palliative Care Consult Service increased nearly 10 percent, bringing new patients served annually to over 1,000. Our telehealth program will further extend care to patients hospitalized in rural and mountain communities, and it is the first of its kind in the country.

Getting Creative with Palliative Care This year saw the launch of the Natalie Kutner Palliative Care Creative Arts Therapy Program, and the hire of art and music therapists who meld their creative skills and therapeutic training to serve the emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their families. This is an underexplored specialty, but one in which we are seeing positive results. With your help, we are expanding palliative care creative arts therapy here while also contributing to setting the global standard of care in this vital area.

“This kind of therapy is a huge part of healing that we haven’t fully recognized. It helps patients feel like people again.

It’s a way to give them back control and decrease their suffering.”

Jeanie Youngwerth, MD

Medical Director Palliative Care Service University of Colorado Hospital

Training Future Generations Through our masters and fellowship programs, we are expanding valuable education and training opportunities to current and future medical professionals. This year, we welcomed the first cohort of students to the Master of Science in Palliative Care/Interprofessional Palliative Care Certificate program, who are gaining skills in symptom management, care integration and the psychological aspects of care. We will begin recruiting a new class this fall. Our Fellowship Program in Hospice and Palliative Medicine is one of only 132 programs in the U.S. and the only one in Colorado. This one-year clinical fellowship focuses on training palliative medicine physician specialists who have completed primary medical training in one of 10 specialties. Our goal is to train five fellows annually, at least one of whom is prepared to care for seriously ill children.

Developing New Models of Care Dr. Hillary Lum and her talented team have been hard at work developing new models to guide group visits in palliative care. In collaboration with colleagues across the U.S. and Canada, they are adapting this intervention and creating pathways for patients to engage with their care from home. They are also working to make advance care planning part of routine medical care, so that more individuals and families begin to share what is most important to them with their health care providers.

Taking Culture into Account Our research team completed an American Cancer Society-funded trial this year, which tested the effects of culturally tailored patient navigators for improving palliative care outcomes for Latinos with advanced cancers. Participants from around the state, including Alamosa, Pueblo, Denver and the Western Slope, worked with bicultural, bilingual study navigators in their home communities.

As a next step, we are testing the effects of this innovative approach in a population of Latinos with serious non-cancer illnesses, with support from the National Institute of Nursing Research.

Leading the Country in Neuro-Palliative Care The vision of our talented faculty is elevating the field of neuro-palliative care. With your help, we have become a leader in this rapidly evolving field, providing training and materials to other institutions across the U.S. who are developing their own neuro-palliative care clinics. We spearheaded three working groups focused on integrating a palliative care approach into neurology research, education and clinical care. We received multiple grants to further our investigation of Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, using trials conducted in community practices and via telehealth with a goal of bringing transformational neuro-palliative care to more of those who need it most.

Our progress is possible because of you.

Thank you for helping us transform lives.

Learn more: CU Anschutz Office of Advancement anschutzadvancement@ucdenver.edu | 303.724.8227 Make a gift: giving.cu.edu/palliative