The Arizona Coalition to Transform Serious Illness Care (AZ Coalition) is a group of 40+ stakeholders in Arizona working to improve the quality of care and outcomes for people with serious illness. The coalition is led by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, the Arizona End of Life Care Partnership, Discern Health, and the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) with support from the David and Lura Lovell Foundation.
C-TAC ACT Index results show that Arizona does not perform as well on a composite of “community” measures as other states (ranked 49/51), and Arizonans with serious illness are spending more time in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) during the last six months of life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ICU use increased, and an AZ Coalition survey found that guidance to shelter in place and practice social distancing exacerbated issues with accessing care, resources, and supports. Even as patients seek more home-based services, community-based organizations must address new challenges delivering care and supports.
The AZ Coalition engaged partner Discern Health to lead a Best Practices Study to determine which community-based services and supports the coalition should pursue to help people with serious illness manage health conditions and increase the number of days at home. The Best Practices Study identified many opportunities, and the coalition members prioritized the recommendation to develop a home-and community-based palliative care network for integrated patient support to help address patient and family barriers to managing conditions at home and reduce the risk of acute events.
The AZ Coalition is pursuing funding to begin a design phase that includes aligning on a home-and community-based palliative care model and establishing value-based payment mechanisms. The design phase will be followed by implementation and evaluation.
The results of the best practice study and recommendations are included in the following reports:
- Arizona best practices study recommends home- and community-based palliative care initiative
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Arizona best practices study: Primary Recommendation
Summarizes the primary recommendation that the Steering Committee selected to move forward -
Best practices study: Overview and recommendation improvement options
The project summary describes the project, recommendations, and study findings (prioritize slides 3-21) -
Arizona best practices: Interventions issue briefs
This document provides information about the evidence for impact/feasibility for different key intervention features
Additional resources
The coalition uses data and evidence-based practices to identify areas we can collectively improve in the state of advance illness care and plan for effective actions to drive change through policy, care processes and community services. Download additional resources using the button below.
Partner organizations
AZ Model
Home- and community-based palliative care for the seriously ill
The Arizona Coalition to Transform Serious Illness Care (AZ Coalition) has developed a Home- and Community-Based Palliative (HCBP) Care Model to support the care and social determinants of health needs of people with serious illness and their caregivers. We plan to design a value-based payment model to support this care model and pilot both with several organizations in Arizona. We designed the care model with enough flexibility to be implemented by a variety of organizations and supported by a variety of different payment models.
