Are We Consulting, Sharing Care, or Taking Over? A Conceptual Framework

Area of Science:

• Palliative Care
• Healthcare Delivery Models
• Interprofessional Collaboration

Background:

• Primary and specialist palliative care services are essential and require synergistic collaboration.
• Existing palliative care service models lack standardized interpretation and deployment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Consultation-Shared Care-Takeover (C-S-T) Framework.
• To describe the evolution and applications of the C-S-T Framework for palliative care services.

Main Methods:

• The C-S-T Framework was developed through an iterative process.
• This process included a symposium, literature reviews, study results, and real-world applications.

Main Results:

• The C-S-T Framework defines a spectrum of care models: Consultation, Shared Care, and Takeover.
• Five domains (Scope, Prescriber, Communication, Follow-up, Most Responsible Practitioner) differentiate these models.
• Each model within the framework has distinct strengths, limitations, uses, and roles.

Conclusions:

• The C-S-T Framework provides a tool to describe, understand, assess, and monitor palliative care service models.
• Further large-scale studies are needed to validate the framework's application across diverse healthcare systems.