Nancy Baughman Csuti, DrPH¹, Carol Breslau, MPA¹, and Gregory Diggs, PhD². (1) The Colorado Trust, 1600 Sherman St, Denver, CO 80203, 303-837-1200, nancy@coltrust.org, (2) National Research Center, Inc., 3005 30th Street, Boulder, CO 80301

While there is much talk about continuity of care in service delivery, this model has rarely been evaluated in the palliative care setting. In 2000 The Colorado Trust Palliative Care Initiative was created to determine if collaborative groups comprised of health care providers and community members improved outcomes for patients and their families. A group of eight very diverse collaboratives was funded for a 3-year initiative. A comprehensive evaluation was designed to measure patient and family outcomes and levels of satisfaction across eight sites. A major purpose of the evaluation was to determine if stronger and more cohesive collaboratives would result in better outcomes on the patient level. This presentation discusses the results of this evaluation and suggests ways to improve both collaborative efforts as well as palliative care programs in the future.

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