Home and Community Based Services

Expanding Hospice and Palliative Care Resources: A Partnership with Home and Community-based Service Providers

This project is a community education and capacity building project of Minnesota Network of Hospice & Palliative Care in collaboration with seven Minnesota Area Agencies on Aging (AAA’s), and is funded in part by a Live Well at Home Grant from Department of Human Services (DHS).

For older adults and their families to plan effectively for end-of-life and serious illness care (hospice and palliative care), it is essential that they are aware of and have access to the necessary resources. These resources should explain in accessible language what advance care planning is, what hospice and palliative care means, how to access hospice and palliative care, when it is appropriate to use Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST), what end-of-life benefits are available to Veterans, and who is available to help individuals and families navigate these issues.

The goal of the project was to increase the availability of consistent, accurate, and culturally relevant information and educational resources on palliative care, hospice care, advance care planning, Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining (POLST), and Veteran’s end-of-life care benefits to older adults across the state of Minnesota through training of Home and Community Based Services Providers and ongoing resource development and support.

We trained over 450 professionals, para-professionals, and community members from over 220 organizations in six regions across Minnesota. To learn more about the impact of this project, please view the evaluation reports conducted by Wilder Research below.

Wilder Research: Evaluation Report Year One

Wilder Research: Evaluation Report Year Two

 

Serious Illness and End-of-Life Care Trainings

These free 4-hour educational sessions presented by Lores Vlaminck, MA, BSN, RN, CHPN, introduced participants to consumer resources designed for use with older adults in the areas of hospice care, palliative care, advance care planning, Veterans’ benefits and the Minnesota Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST).