Palliative care is specialized medical care that provides patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress that often occur with serious illness. Palliative care (PC) is appropriate at any age and at any stage of a serious illness, and can be provided alongside curative treatment. In recent years the availability of specialty palliative care programs has increased dramatically, as payers, providers, and consumers have come to appreciate its benefits. In 2014 the California Health Care Foundation sponsored research that catalogued the prevalence of palliative care services across the state, and considered the supply of such services relative to the estimated need among individuals in the final year of life. Results of that research indicated that services available in acute care hospitals were sufficient to meet 33% to 50% of estimated need, and that programs serving patients in clinics, patient homes, or across both settings--community-based PC--were able to meet 24% to 37% of need. Services were unevenly distributed across the state, with many counties not having access to inpatient palliative care, community-based palliative care, or either type of service. The 2017 update of this research found dramatic increases in the number of programs, the number of individuals being served, and broader availability across the state.
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