Advanced Palliative Care Certification

We offer Advanced Palliative Care Certification (APCC), designed to recognize excellence in inpatient palliative care treatment.  Our APCC requirements integrate the National Consensus Project Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, 3rd edition and the CMS Conditions of Participation (CoPs) for hospitals.

Our requirements provide a framework that assists organizations in the development and implementation of processes and systems that improve operational effectiveness and enhance positive health outcomes to improve patients' quality of life.

Benefits of certification

• Validates organizational compliance with accepted standards of palliative care practice
• Validates that the organization has a systematic approach to continuous quality improvement in the delivery of palliative care
• Provides patients and their families with validation that the team caring for them has demonstrated experience, knowledge and skills in the complex specialty of palliative care

The survey process

The Advanced Palliative Care Certification survey audits an organization's palliative care program in the following areas:

• Quality management system
• Program management
• Case management
• Staffing management
• Infection prevention and control
• Palliative care service delivery encompassing the multidisciplinary approach of all associated service lines