Rapid Implementation of Inpatient Telepalliative Medicine Consultations during COVID-19 Pandemic

As COVID-19 cases increase throughout the country and healthcare systems grapple with the need to decrease provider exposure and minimize personal protective equipment (PPE) use while maintaining high quality patient care, our specialty is called upon to consider new methods of delivering inpatient palliative care. Telepalliative medicine has been used to great effect in outpatient and home-based palliative care, but has had fewer applications in the inpatient setting. As we plan for decreased provider availability due to quarantine and redeployment and seek to reach increasingly isolated hospitalized patients in the face of COVID-19, the need for telepalliative medicine in the inpatient setting is now clear.

Source: Journal of Pain and Symptom Management - April 9, 2020 Category: Palliative Care Authors: Jessi Humphreys, Laura Schoenherr, Giovanni Elia, Naomi Tzril Saks, Chelsea Brown, Susan Barbour, Steven Z. Pantilat Source Type: research