{"id":238519,"date":"2025-12-01T12:30:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T17:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=238519"},"modified":"2025-12-01T14:31:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T19:31:54","slug":"uconn-healths-palliative-care-growth-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/12\/uconn-healths-palliative-care-growth-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Health\u2019s Palliative Care Growth Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Healthcare<\/a>UConn Health\u2019s expanded palliative care services continue to grow, spanning hospital patients to ambulatory patients, with or without cancer.<\/p>\n

Palliative care referrals in the Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/a> are up 31% from last year, and 600% since inception in 2017.<\/p>\n

Referrals for inpatient palliative care consultations, which started two years ago<\/a>, are up 35% from last year.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Dr. Mary Buss<\/a> and Dr. Germaine Soliman<\/a> established an outpatient palliative care clinic<\/a> for patients dealing with conditions other than cancer. Since opening, it has seen more than 130 patients over nearly 450 visits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data for palliative care is very strong,\u201d Buss says. \u201cPeople who get palliative care earlier live better. By better, we mean improvement in quality of life and reduction in symptom burden. They tend to avoid using health care as much at the end of life, which, most people, that\u2019s their preference\u2026. And by \u2018earlier,\u2019 we mean, \u2018outpatient.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Palliative care can be provided to anyone at any point in a serious illness. — Sarah Loschiavo<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/span><\/p>\n

It was Sarah Loschiavo<\/a>, nursing director of palliative medicine, supportive care and hospice services, who started what today is the Supportive Cancer Services and Palliative Care program in the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/a> nine years ago as a team of one palliative care nurse practitioner.<\/p>\n

\u201cPalliative care can be provided at any point during a serious illness, regardless of the stage or if the illness is curable, and that\u2019s really important.\u201d Loschiavo says. \u201cWhether the plan is cure into cancer survivorship or improved quality of life during a chronic, progressive disease, palliative care adjusts to the disease trajectory which improves outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, UConn Health\u2019s palliative care services collectively include two physicians, five nurse practitioners, a registered nurse, a social worker, a chaplain, and a palliative care pharmacist. In 2026, two additional physicians and a nurse practitioner are expected to join the team.<\/p>\n

\"Group
UConn Health\u2019s palliative care team includes a range of professions, including (from left) Dr. Germine Soliman, outpatient palliative care physician, social worker Marie Ziello, the Rev. Dan Warriner, chaplain, inpatient nurse practitioner Dawn Monahan, Dr. Mary Buss, outpatient palliative care physician, inpatient nurse practitioner Kara Dazkevich, Sarah Loschiavo, nursing director of palliative medicine, supportive care and hospice services, outpatient palliative care nurse Katie Killeen, inpatient nurse practitioner Anne Megson, administrative program coordinator Kat Montalvo, and outpatient palliative care medical assistant Camryn Walsh. Team members not pictured include pharmacy clinical coordinator Megan Mitchell, outpatient supportive care clinic office assistant Dulce Amor Tan, and outpatient nurse practitioners Ellen Morris White, and Olga Nesta. (Tina Encarnacion\/UConn Health photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a group, in addition to patient care, they also make education a priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause our work intersects with so many disciplines across the institution, the request for our interprofessional team to take on learners is quite high,\u201d Loschiavo says. \u201cWe work with medical students, residents, pharmacy residents, nurse practitioner students, and occasionally other students. We\u2019re always eager to share our expertise, and our team is highly skilled at creating meaningful learning experiences that learners can carry forward into their future work.\u201d<\/p>\n

While palliative care is associated with hospice, or end-of-life, care, the terms are not interchangeable. Rather, hospice care is a subset of palliative care.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes like to think of palliative care as a \u2018both and,\u2019 which is distinct from hospice, which is a little bit of an \u2018either or,\u2019\u201d Buss says. \u201cThe hospice medical benefit is designed primarily for delivery, for care in the home, because patients are too sick to leave the home, and it requires them to limit access to some other types of care. Whereas palliative care, you can continue to get whatever other medical care you choose to have and have palliative care in addition to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really important to dispel the myth that palliative care is exclusively end-of-life care,\u201d Loschiavo says. \u201cPalliative care can be provided to anyone at any point in a serious illness, taking a truly holistic approach by addressing physical, emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual needs and determining how we can best support patients in reaching their goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

You\u2019re adding an additional level of support with you to help take care of them. — Dr. Mary Buss<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/span><\/p>\n

It can be a tough sell to patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have this preconceived idea of, \u2018Somebody else had palliative care and was dead in three days. That\u2019s not me. I don\u2019t need you,\u201d Buss says. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to say is, \u2018We\u2019re here to support your quality of life. We\u2019re here to help you live well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the inpatient setting, palliative care consultations, often in close collaboration with the hospitalists and other specialty teams, have shown to be valuable, particularly when patients are admitted multiple times and they get to know the palliative care specialists.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes as a disease progresses, the benefit of having palliative care involved early is that they\u2019re already a trusted part of the medical team, we aren\u2019t just coming in to talk about death and dying,\u201d Loschiavo says. \u201cBy the time patients reach that stage, we\u2019ve often spent months having conversations, meeting with the family, getting to know the patient, and building that trusting relationship. That continuity has been critical for our team as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an outpatient setting, Buss says often when a provider is on board and recommends palliative care, that can help change a reluctant patient\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means you\u2019re adding an additional level of support with you to help take care of them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But she admits, providers sometimes can need some convincing too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s evolving, but there are still a substantial proportion of health care providers who really associate palliative care with end-of-life care; and so if we don\u2019t get consulted until after the decision to do nothing but comfort care, then you perpetuate the idea that palliative care is only end-of-life care,\u201d Buss says. \u201cSo we are always searching for partners in other specialties to recognize the value of palliative care in the symptom management piece, in the decision-making piece, so they consult earlier and then can demonstrate to their colleague who is a later adopter, \u2018Oh, I didn\u2019t realize palliative care could do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to cancer, conditions for which palliative care may be appropriate include heart failure, advanced lung disease, end-stage kidney disease, dementia, and even certain traumas. Palliative care specialists also are embedded in UConn Health\u2019s Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Muscular Dystrophy (MD) Program<\/a> and Parkinson\u2019s Disease and Movement Disorders Center<\/a>, lending their expertise in symptom management, psychosocial and spiritual support, \u200aand medical decision-making.<\/p>\n

Beyond the original palliative and supportive care program<\/a>, which is available to patients in the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, any patient who has established care with a UConn Health provider is eligible for referral to outpatient palliative care services. Inpatient palliative care consultations are available to hospitalized patients through their care team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Expanding staff and services in both hospital and outpatient settings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":238528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2231,2388,2672,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-238519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-healthcare-workforce","category-healthcare-reimagined","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 06:31:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238519"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238595,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238519\/revisions\/238595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/238528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238519"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=238519"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=238519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}