CALL Care - Building on Organizational and Community Strengths in Providing End-of-Life Care

Project Overview

Many persons with life-threatening illnesses require services before they begin receiving hospice or hospital-based palliative care. Although health care professionals focus on diagnosis, treatment and comfort care, patients and families view the illness as it impacts their whole life. The CALL Care project developed interdisciplinary models for delivery of comprehensive care for those facing life-threatening illness in 11 sites (one primary care, eight acute care and two long-term care), enrolling 259 patients and families, across the United States.

The project addressed physical, emotional, spiritual and relationship needs. It focused on linking appropriate existing services, developing new services only when gaps in continuity of services between the community and health care organizations were evident. It was designed to encourage early identification of and assistance for persons for whom illness was progressive and likely to lead to death. The overarching intent of the program was to enable dying individuals and family caregivers to live fully and meaningfully within the limits of their illness and congruent with personal goals during the last phase of life.

CALL Care proved to be an effective interdisciplinary intervention approach to provide individual care for people with life-threatening illness, and the demonstration projects continued at many of the original sites. The project was implemented under the auspices of Supportive Care of the Dying: A Coalition for Compassionate Care.

Resources:

• London MR, McSkimming S, Drew N., Quinn C and Carney, B. “Evaluation of a Comprehensive, Adaptable, Life-Affirming, Longitudinal (CALL) Palliative Care Project,” Journal of Palliative Medicine, 8(6): 1214-1225, 2005.
• Also see: Home Care/Home Health

For more information contact:

Carol Lieberman
Supportive Care of the Dying Coalition
Providence Health System
4805 N.E. Glisan 2MO7
Portland, OR 97213
Phone: 503.215.7009
Fax: 503.215.5054
E-mail: [email protected]

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Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care was a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation dedicated to long-term changes in health care institutions to substantially improve care for dying people and their families.