Meeting Your Patients’ Needs in the Community

If your patient has a life limiting illness with a life expectancy of about 1-1 ½ years or less, and is not physically or emotionally ready for hospice, NorthStar Palliative Care can help.
We are a mobile subspecialty practice providing symptom management and advance care planning for people with life limiting illness.
We care for patients who are not yet physically or emotionally ready for hospice, and who may be pursuing curative treatments. Our physicians and nurse practitioners specialize in managing pain, constipation, nausea, dyspnea, unintentional weight loss, depression/anxiety sleep disturbance, agitation/dementia behaviors and other distressing symptoms, including electronic prescribing of controlled substances when needed. We also facilitate family meetings for advance care planning and help patients and families navigate their healthcare options.
Our team makes house calls to private residences, assisted living facilities, memory care, and partnered skilled facilities as often as medically necessary. Our providers work alongside the existing health care team, billing symptom and palliative codes – this means our work does not interfere with physician’s office visits, skilled home care nursing and therapy services, or facility skilled days.
For your most challenging patients, we provide an extra layer of support to document goals and wishes including code status, manage symptoms and increase patient and caregiver confidence. This support is shown to reduce ER visits and hospitalizations, decrease family distress, and help you stay focused on managing the underlying conditions. (Source: CAPC.org)

The Advantages of NorthStar Palliative Care

Our experts collaborate with you, other specialists, the patient and their family, to coordinate care and:

• Provide relief from stress, pain and other symptoms – such as shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite and problems with sleep – that may be interfering with daily life
• Relieve side effects of curative treatments
• Improve quality of life and confidence for the patient and caregivers
• Discuss and document the wishes, goals and concerns of your patient and their family including codes status, artificial nutrition and hydration, intubation and other critical decisions
• Reduce triggers for avoidable visits to the ER
• Support family members who are coping with changes in the patient’s health status
• Help patients and their families gain a greater understanding of their illness, anticipate future needs and coordinate with you as their treatment needs change (Source: CAPC.org)