(P50) The PALTC-Hospice Interface: A Post-COVID-19 Staff Capacity Building Educational Model

Objective/Aim: Participants will be able to: Understand, apply, and reinforce each other’s general PALTC and hospice information and admission/discharge order referral templates with an aim of improving the Hospice/PALTC interface.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to staffing shortages and increased staff turnover in nursing homes (NHs). Educating Post-Acute and Long-Term Care (PALTC) and Hospice staff regarding their respective services in PALTC is critical to the quality of care provided. Hospice services provided to residents of PALTC facilities are associated with higher resident and family satisfaction, lower health care cost, and improved end-of-life (EOL) care. One barrier to timely hospice enrollment is limited understanding of hospice services and referral procedures by the PALTC interdisciplinary team (IDT).
In part-one of this three-part Quality Improvement (QI) project, the project's PALTC medical director and leadership team designed and implemented a project to enhance the knowledge of the PALTC IDT of hospice services and referral processes. An increase in knowledge from 1 to 9 points on the 0–10-point Likert Scale was noted amongst 8 of 13 PALTC IDT leaders and 18 of 23 staff. Another barrier to timely hospice enrollment is limited understanding of PALTC services by the hospice IDT.
In part-two of this project, the hospice medical director and leadership team designed and implemented a project to enhance the knowledge of the hospice IDT of PALTC services. An increase in knowledge from 1 to 8 points on the 0-10 Likert Scale was noted amongst 8 of 8 hospice leaders and 14 of 15 nurses/nursing assistants and non-medical staff. (1 without increase).
In part-three of this project, PALTC and Hospice leadership and staff were educated post-COVID-19 of each other’s respective services.

Quality Improvement

Methods: The project was introduced to both PALTC and Hospice leadership and staff. The program included 15 minute "PALTC Pearls" didactics to the Hospice team and a “Hospice Pearls” didactics to the PALTC team with associated posters and manuals including hospice-specific admission/discharge order referral templates, and a question/answer session. A one-question survey was distributed pre- and post-didactic sessions to obtain self-reported knowledge of their respectively learned PALTC or Hospice services using a Likert Scale of 0-10.

Results: 1. 17 of 18 PALTC participants had an increase in knowledge. (1 without increase).
2. 11 of 11 Hospice participants had an increase in knowledge.
3. Increase in knowledge ranged from 1 to 7 points for the PALTC
team and 1-5 points for the Hospice team on the 0-10 Likert Scale, respectively.

Conclusions: PALTC and Hospice leadership and staff's self-reported knowledge of each other's respective services was increased through this post-COVID-19 presentation of the project. Next steps will include integration and continued expansion of learned knowledge into everyday communications between PALTC and Hospice leadership and staff.