Creation of a Novel Pediatric Palliative Care Navigator to Improve End-of-Life Care for Children with Serious Illness

Pediatric end of life care is starkly different compared to adults. There are no benchmark quality metrics in pediatric palliative care, advance care planning conversations are poorly documented and there are no pediatric specific electronic health record navigators to guide standard of care. This leads to suboptimal care at the end of a child’s life. An interdisciplinary group with quality and information technology experience developed the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary pediatric palliative navigator to help tailor pediatric needs, drive development of benchmarks in our field, and ensure gold standard, quality and equitable care delivery to children dying of serious illness. This led to Epic writing the first clinical program of its kind, The Joint Commission Certification in Advanced Palliative Care and federal funding awards.