Prioritizing Comparative Effectiveness Research Questions for Patient-Centered Palliative Care Delivery for Adult Patients with Advanced Illnesses and Their Caregivers: A Stakeholder Workshop

As part of PCORI’s efforts to fund high-impact and useful research on critical patient-centered health and healthcare issues, the Improving Healthcare Systems (IHS) and Communication and Dissemination Research (CDR) programs partnered to host a multi-stakeholder workshop to discuss topics aimed at facilitating the delivery of patient-centered palliative care for adult patients living with advanced, serious illnesses and their caregivers. Our overarching goal is to support research that would

a. facilitate care planning over time that is consistent with the goals and preferences of patients with advanced illnesses and their caregivers, and
b. facilitate the delivery of coordinated palliative care that effectively implements those care plans.

Workshop participants helped refine a comparative effectiveness research agenda focused on implementing optimal models of delivering palliative care and improving patient-centered communication and shared decision-making within the context of different advanced illnesses. Discussion at the meeting highlighted decisional dilemmas commonly faced by patients with advanced illnesses, their caregivers, clinicians, healthcare systems, or other stakeholders and identify opportunities for research to compare different efficacious and/or widely used intervention approaches to address those dilemmas in real world settings.

PCORI intends to use the feedback from the workshop to conduct further gap analyses on the list of topics/questions put forth by the workshop in developing a potential funding announcement in this area. The overall objective of the workshop was to create a set of comparative research questions with the potential to produce findings that ultimately improve patient and family-centered outcomes.

In-person attendance was by invitation only, but the public was welcome to listen in via teleconference/webinar.

PCORI Workshops Introduction (9:00 am - 9:30 am ET)

Main Meeting Teleconference/Webinar (9:45 am - 5:00 pm ET)