Clinical Collaboration
Big Bend Palliative Care partners with referring providers to help identify patient needs and address concerns that may be affecting quality of life. Our team can assist with symptom burden, communication needs, and care planning in a way that supports the provider’s existing treatment approach. This collaboration helps ensure patients receive care that is aligned with their condition, their goals, and the realities of their day-to-day experience.
By working closely with providers, our team can also help patients and families who may be struggling to understand a serious diagnosis or navigate difficult decisions. This helps reduce some of the uncertainty that often comes with advanced illness.
Guidance for Complex Situations
Palliative care can be especially helpful when patients are experiencing repeated hospitalizations, progressive decline, or ongoing symptoms despite treatment. It may also be appropriate when families are facing difficult conversations.
Big Bend Palliative Care gives providers another way to respond to those situations with care that focuses on comfort and quality of life while remaining compatible with curative or disease-directed treatment. Our team is available to help patients and families work through complex medical situations with greater understanding and a stronger sense of direction.
A Resource for Providers and Patients
Big Bend Palliative Care is here to serve as a resource for providers who want to ensure patients and families have access to additional guidance during serious illness. Our team approach can help address needs that may not fit neatly within a routine office visit or hospital stay, while still reinforcing the care plan established by the referring provider.
Through partnership and communication, we help extend care in a way that benefits both the patient and the broader healthcare team. When palliative care is introduced at the right time, it can help patients feel more informed and help providers feel confident.
Big Bend Palliative Care may be appropriate if your patients have any of these symptoms:
- Two or more hospital admissions for the same diagnosis within three months, such as CHF, COPD, ESRD, CVA, cancer, or dementia with recurring infections, or three or more admissions within the last 12 months
- Persistent or difficult symptoms despite optimal treatment of the underlying condition
- Artificial nutrition or hydration requested by the patient or family when the patient has a limited anticipated survival related to the underlying condition, or in cases involving dementia
- Significant weight loss of 5 to 10 percent over the past three to six months, and/or a low body mass index
- Major changes in function, such as ambulation only with a walker or becoming wheelchair-bound
- Patient or family concern regarding advanced disease progression, end of life, or lack of awareness of an advance directive
- Metastatic cancer
- A patient who remains full code despite an overall poor prognosis
- A patient or family request for a palliative care consultation
We look forward to hearing from you soon!
