Palliative Care Fast Facts

As the American population ages, health care systems are faced with providing high-quality care for individuals with serious illness. The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the 4Ms (What Matters, Mentation, Medication, Mobility) framework to assist with age-friendly care. Palliative care is a medical specialty that focuses on symptom relief and support of both the patient with a serious illness and the family to align patients' values (what matters) with their health care goals. Palliative Care Fast Facts is a virtual resource providing concise, peer-reviewed, evidence-based summaries of key palliative care topics via a searchable website (www.mypcnow.org/fast-facts.). 

The aim of our study was to identify if there were Fast Facts that fit within the 4M framework and find a way to make this more accessible to providers. Of the 462 Fast Facts currently published, 32% could be tied to at least one of the 4Ms. The majority (53%) of these were within the What Matters category, followed by Medications (30%), Mentation (12%) and Mobility (5%). An index of the identified Fast Facts was created and in the future the focus will be to make website changes to allow for finding of these fast facts quickly.