Page 6 - PHPCN 2019 Annual Conference

Featured Speakers

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2019 Learning Objectives: Understand the concept of patient-
centered care (PCC). Understand successes and failures
within the health care system. Discuss the role of hospice in
Keynote – The Myth of Patient – modeling PCC.
Centered Care

John A. Mulder, MD, FAAHPM, HMDC FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2019
Every day in health care systems across
the United States, patients are receiving CLOSING LUNCHEON
treatments that they don’t need, don’t
want, are inconsistent with their values, Lit Review 2019: A Look at Recent Clinical
are contrary to good medical care, and Literature Important to Palliative and
sometimes are frankly harmful to them. Hospice Care
And they don’t realize it. In fact, they
John A. Mulder think they’re receiving the “best care in
the world.”
Doctors with exceptional training and access to the most
sophisticated medical technology and contemporary
pharmaceuticals are treating these patients with what they
believe to be the “best care in the world,” unaware that
their interventions often foster poor quality of life and deliver
outcomes among the lowest in industrial nations. And they
don’t realize it. Our medical care system is broken.
Joan K. Harrold Amy M. Westcott
Fueled by institutional arrogance, ignorance of outcome Joan K. Harrold, MD, MPH, FACP, FAAHPM, Medical
metrics, and antiquated habits and attitudes, while
influenced by perverse financial incentives, obtuse regulatory Director and Vice President, Medical Services, Palliative
constraints, ill-conceived insurance directives and profit-driven Medicine Consultants of Hospice and Community Care
pharmaceutical/device companies, decisions about patient and Amy M. Westcott, MD MHPE, CMD, FAAHPM,
care has been wrested from a value-centered physician/patient AGSF, Optum Medical Director PA/DE and Associate
dyad and is now directed by individuals and companies whose Professor, Geriatric and Palliative Medicine, Penn State
motivation has drifted far from the focus of patient needs. College of Medicine
It is precisely in the operational strategy of hospice How do you answer questions from patients and families?
organizations, honed over 35 years of practice and Do you go to the literature to formulate your practice? Do
refinement – the interdisciplinary team structure and the you look at the evidence to update your practice? If you
inherent values-oriented, patient-focused paradigm of care – find an article that is “close” but doesn’t exactly answer
where the answers to how we must revamp a broken health your question, do you know when to extrapolate from-and
care system can be found. For far too long, hospice has when not to? Join us to learn key points about analyzing the
been on the fringe of mainstream medicine, caring for a small evidence, review pertinent articles from the past year, and be
subset of patients, often as an afterthought, and entering better prepared to use the evidence in your practice.
into the life of patients and families too late in the course of
illness. But the perspective of true patient-centered care and Learning Objectives: Identify questions encountered in
effective communication skills embodied by hospice staff are hospice and palliative medicine which require looking at
the values and talent that will be required if we want to truly scholarly literature. Connect questions to evidence-base
change a broken health care system. medicine and/or ‘best practice’ principles based on the
scholarly literature.
It is precisely the integration of hospice into the lives of
patients and families in desperate times which restores hope
in otherwise helpless situations, comfort when suffering seems
overwhelming, and inspiration when hopefulness is waning. It
is this same ethic that can instill the same results when applied
not to a broken body, but a broken health care system.

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