Your patients deserve the best care experience possible. Kaleidoscope, Center for Palliative Care’s community-based palliative care program offers team support to help manage the symptoms and stress of a serious illness, wherever they call home. We specialize in coordinating care across multiple providers, ensuring open lines of communication that support patients and their families.

You want what’s best for your patients, but it can be hard to find time to provide treatment, manage symptoms, communicate with other providers, and offer support to caregivers and family members. Palliative care is proven to improve quality of life and satisfaction for both patients and their families. Bringing in our Kaleidoscope palliative care team can relieve those burdens, so you can focus on what you do best and provide an additional layer of support that can improve the patient’s care experience and make your job easier.

Referral to the Kaleidoscope program is simple – one call to 574.367.2469 from your office is all that’s needed to begin the process. Once we have your patient’s records, our team will schedule an in-home appointment with your patient to provide a comprehensive palliative care assessment that addresses their physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs. It also includes an assessment of the caregiver’s needs and concerns. Kaleidoscope staff will then coordinate care with you and other providers to assure the patient’s needs and those of their caregiver are being met.

The program also offers community-based referrals to support groups and grief/bereavement services as needed. We also cover goals of care conversations and advance care planning, including the completion of POST (physician orders for scope of treatment) forms. Our experienced, compassionate team will provide education for the patients and their caregiver(s) about their disease processes and progress.

Any patient who has been diagnosed with serious advance illness can benefit from home-based palliative care. These are some indications to note:

• The patient has experienced repeated hospitalizations or trips to the ER
• The patient is still seeking curative care
• The patient is hospice appropriate, but their goals don’t align with hospice care
• The patient has experienced a decline in function and/or has had frequent falls

In addition, ask yourself if you would be surprised if the patient died within the next year – if the answer is “no” or “maybe,” they are appropriate for referral.

Diagnoses that are appropriate for referral include:

• Dementia
• COPD
• CHF
• Cancer
• Stroke
• Multiple sclerosis
• End-stage renal disease
• End-stage liver disease
• Protein calorie malnutrition
• Guillain-Barre syndrome