Data & Research Hub

For families: Most large hospitals have a palliative-care team you can ask for by name, even on day one of admission.

For clinicians: Reliable access in large centers; gaps remain in smaller and rural hospitals. Track local referral patterns.

For organizations: Penetration is a coverage proxy, not a quality measure. Pair it with staffing ratios and consult volume per 1,000 admissions.

For families: Earlier conversations about hospice often mean more days of support at home, not fewer.

For clinicians: Late referrals shorten the runway for symptom control, caregiver training, and goals-of-care alignment.

For organizations: Short-stay rate is a key utilization signal; pair with median LOS and live-discharge rate when benchmarking.

For families: If your family belongs to a racial or ethnic minority, ask early about hospice and palliative care. Referrals are often delayed.

For clinicians: Examine your own referral patterns; standardized triggers reduce variation.

For organizations: Stratify enrollment, LOS, and live-discharge rates by race/ethnicity and language preference.

For families: If you live rurally, telehealth palliative consults are increasingly available. Ask your team.

For clinicians: Hybrid (in-person + telehealth) consult models can extend reach without dedicated FTE.

For organizations: Workforce planning should include cross-coverage agreements and telepalliative arrangements.

For families: Coverage shapes what serious-illness care costs out of pocket. Ask about eligibility and financial counseling early, not at the first bill.

For clinicians: Know your county's coverage picture; uninsured patients present later and need financial navigation alongside clinical referral.

For organizations: Pair referral data with local ACS coverage estimates to see where cost, not preference, is driving late enrollment.

For families: Local prevalence is context, never prediction: it says what a community carries, not what any person has or wants.

For clinicians: Use PLACES to anticipate comorbidity patterns in your catchment when planning palliative capacity.

For organizations: PLACES gives every US county the same denominator for planning. Pair it with utilization data to find under-served pockets.

For families: If specialists are scarce where you live, ask what can be done by phone, video, or a visiting team instead of assuming travel.

For clinicians: Check whether your patient's county carries an HPSA designation before building a plan that assumes local specialty follow-up.

For organizations: HPSA status drives federal placement and loan-repayment programs. Align palliative workforce asks with existing designations.

For families: Specialist palliative-care availability varies widely. Primary teams can deliver many core elements with training.

For clinicians: Primary palliative-care skill-building (CAPC, VitalTalk) extends reach without specialist FTE.

For organizations: Workforce modeling should pair specialty supply with primary palliative-care training adoption.

For families: Access to comfort-focused care varies enormously by country and region. Advocacy matters.

For clinicians: Global need is concentrated in LMICs where opioid availability and trained workforce are limited.

For organizations: International benchmarking helps frame domestic policy debates on coverage and workforce.

For families: If an AI tool is used in your care, you can ask what it does, how it was tested, and who is accountable for its output.

For clinicians: Document AI-assisted recommendations alongside your own clinical reasoning; never let a model carry the final say in goals-of-care discussions.

For organizations: Map vendor AI claims to the WHO principles before procurement; align with the NIST AI RMF for operational risk controls.

For families: U.S. regulators expect AI used in care to be tested, monitored, and governed, not deployed and forgotten.

For clinicians: Ask your vendor which AI RMF functions (govern, map, measure, manage) they have evidence for before relying on a tool clinically.

For organizations: Use the AI RMF as the spine of an AI governance policy; pair with WHO principles for ethical framing.

For families: Many large hospitals belong to coalitions that vet AI tools before they reach the bedside.

For clinicians: Request a CHAI-style model card for any predictive model embedded in your EHR, including mortality and deterioration scores.

For organizations: Adopt CHAI assurance reporting as a procurement gate alongside HIPAA, NIST, and WHO controls.

For families: Some software in your care is regulated as a medical device. That means FDA reviewed it before it shipped.

For clinicians: Check whether the AI tool you're using is FDA-cleared, what its intended use is, and whether it has a PCCP for safe updates.

For organizations: Map your AI inventory to FDA SaMD classifications; pair with NIST AI RMF for residual operational risk.

For families: Manufacturers must follow a structured risk-management process before a device reaches patients.

For clinicians: When evaluating a device, ask the manufacturer how ISO 14971 was applied, especially for AI-enabled and connected devices.

For organizations: Procurement contracts can require ISO 14971 documentation as a baseline.