Master Plan for Aging Recommendations Include Palliative Care

Originally posted on September 25, 2020

The work on California’s Master Plan for Aging (MPA) reached an important milestone with the September 18 release of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) recommendations to inform the Master Plan for Aging.

As a member of the MPA SAC, and the subgroups on healthy aging, workforce, and healthcare integration, CCCC’s CEO, Judy Thomas, JD, was successful in ensuring that several of the recommendations center around palliative care and advance care planning.

Palliative care and advance care planning (ACP) are featured most prominently in Goal 3 of the Master Plan, which focuses on Health and Well Being.  Goal 3 includes a section dedicated to palliative care (pages 41-44), with major goals and recommendations around:

  • Expanding access to palliative care services
  • Incorporating palliative care best practices
  • Growing the palliative care workforce
  • Educating the healthcare workforce in principles and practices of palliative care
  • Empowering persons’ decision making
  • Operationalizing ACP
  • Honoring wishes of Californians at the end of life, including implementing a statewide registry for electronic exchange of POLST

Over the past year, the MPA SAC engagement process has included nine SAC meetings, as well as thirteen Long-Term Services & Supports Subcommittee, six Research Subcommittee, and four Equity Work Group meetings. In between these meetings, countless hours of work took place, including review and consideration of over 240 policy recommendations and over 1,000 public comments via meetings, surveys, email, nine Webinar Wednesdays, and six legislative round tables.  The process culminated in an executive summary, seven small group reports, and over 700 SAC recommendations to inform the final MPA.

Learn more: