Sharing an important message from AAPA:

Right now, AAPA is working to make sure PAs are included in the COVID-19 packages moving through Congress.  But we can’t do it alone.  We urge PAs and PA students to reach out to their federal legislators to ensure that healthcare providers have access to needed PPE without delay, and to guarantee that a provision to authorize PAs to order home healthcare for their patients in order to move them out of the hospital and free up much needed beds is included in the emergency package now being drafted by Congress.  

Click here to go to AAPA's Advocacy Action Center and send a message to your senators and representative in the House. 

Please TAKE ACTION today. 

Thank you!

Tate Heuer

Vice President, Federal Advocacy

AAPA

www.aapa.org/advocacy

Attention all Hospice and Palliative Medicine PA experts!

Publishing opportunity:

Elsevier is seeking contributing authors for a chapter on hospice and palliative medicine in their forthcoming textbook: Gerontology and Geriatrics for Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants:  An Inter professional Approach.  

This is a wonderful chance for a new career professional/faculty member to begin publishing.  The editors are very helpful (speaking from personal experience).   For more information, contact Freddi Segal-Gidan segalgi@usc.edu.  

Please see our PAHPM COVID-19 UPDATE

PAHPM Info with Links to Resources.

Stay Safe & Be Well.

Our Podcast has hit Spotify!!!!

We are giving you a few options for listening because we are also posted on Soundcloud. You can view that via the Podcast page in our Donate section. That said, if you want to hear this on your drive time commute or morning run via Spotify - click below. Our first podcast features P.A. Student - Delilah Dominguez as she discusses wit Executive Director, Nadya Dimitrov about her journey into becoming a Physician Assistant and the value of Palliative Medicine.

PAHPM and AAPA Learning Central have collaborated to offer PAs an opportunity to expand their primary palliative care skillset while also earning CME.  Learning Central is now offering several presentations available for CME on caring for those with serious illness.  These lectures highlight everything from caring for our patients, their families, and ourselves.  They also feature PAHPM’s own members and experts leading the way forward for PAs.

https://cme.aapa.org/catalog/

For those of you looking for a hospice update for PAs, check out our Hospice Resources page.

Does your state statutes support PAs partnering and prescribing with hospice?  One tip I've found is to check with your state hospice association.  They often know the latest statutes for each state, and may have been following the CMS rule changes more closely than your local hospice.

AAPA has also offered to help us clarify what each state is doing.

For questions regarding restrictive hospice language in your state, contact Erika Miller at emiller@aapa.org.

Does your state have a POLST or MOLST - like form to document end-of-life issues?  Many states do.  

They are helpful and meant for those patients who:

• you would not be surprised if they died in the next 12 months from a life-threatening or serious illness.
• you would not be surprised if they were unable to share their own wishes in the next 12 months (think end-stage dementia, ALS, etc.)

They are not for healthy individuals.

More than half the states that have a POLST-like forms allow PAs to sign them independently.  Still, some states require a physician co-signature, and some do not allow PAs to sign at all.

There is a National POLST Paradigm organization which has more information on POLST around the country.  They actually have developed a National POLST form and there is some movement to adopt this.  A great idea, but right now it's default is for PAs to require a signauture.

Thoughts?

What's your POLST experience? What are your questions?

South Carolina Law Allows Physician Assistants to Refer Patients to Hospice 

Nice article and a win for patients and PAs in South Carolina.

More for us to do Nationally and PAHPM is working hard on the gaps that remain!

 

 

Reminder if you will be attending the 2019 AAPA Conference in Denver that we will be there!  Check our our Events Page for details on our special symposium on Hospice & Palliative Topics and for our Annual PAHPM Meeting--all are welcome!

We'd love to hear from you and see you in Denver.  We'll have an exhibit booth as well--so come stop by!!

Hello all!

Please help respectively share questions, comments, best practices here so we can all learn from each other!

Thanks