Research Alert: September 5, 2024

Palliative Care Challenges and Solutions in Rural U.S. Communities

Palliative care (PC) is interdisciplinary care to increase the comfort and quality of life for patients with serious illness, including providing physical, emotional, social, and spiritual care for patients and their caregivers. This study sought to describe the availability of PC services in rural communities compared to urban communities and identify novel solutions for providing this essential care to rural communities.

Key Findings:

• A smaller proportion of rural hospitals (69.1%) than urban hospitals (75.9%) reported providing PC services.
• PC services were inequitably distributed across rural counties according to socioeconomic and racial composition, with counties without PC services having higher poverty rates, lower levels of education, and higher proportions of Black and American Indian/Alaska Native populations.
• In a survey of rural hospitals, more than one-third (37.3%) reported that accessing PC services was somewhat or very difficult for patients in their communities. The most frequently reported barriers to providing PC services included dispersed geography (78.2%), inadequate PC workforce (73.0%), and inadequate PC workforce training (69.2%).
• Interviewees at small, rural hospitals reported that key facilitators for offering PC services included community collaboration, the availability of informal support networks, staff willingness to develop and employ innovative methods to deliver services, and affiliations with larger urban health care systems that can offer resources and support.

Additional Resources of Interest:

• More FORHP-funded research on Hospice and palliative care
• More information about the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
• More information from the Rural Health Information Hub's topic guide: Hospice and Palliative Care