Advance Care Planning (ACP) Workshop for Health Care Professionals. Gain skills on starting and leading ACP Conversations because: Everyone has the right to have their wishes known, followed and documented.

Non-QMC Employees Contact:  Lori Protzman, lprotzman@queens.org or 691-7716

Continuing Nursing Education: Nursing contact hours 7.41. The Clinical Education Team of the Queen's Medical Center is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the Western Multi-State Division, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. Continuing Social Worker Education:  Credits Approved by NASW HI. Contact hours will be awarded after successful attendance of full course and completing course evaluation.

First Insurance Center

1100 Ward Ave.,  9th Floor, Room 980
Validated parking at 1100 Ward Ave. Honolulu HI 96814

Please join us Sept. 21 for Palliative Pupus.  Come hear an interactive interdisciplinary story from the cutting edge of hospice and palliative care and mingle with colleagues. 

If you are unable to attend and would like to call in, please contact us for details.

Please bring some pupus to share and invite your colleagues. This is a great chance for people who wonder what palliative and hospice care really looks like as we describe and discuss a real person and their journey.

Please note Palliative Pupus participants: There is FREE parking after 4 PM in the municipal lot on South Beretania, just Diamond Head of Queen's. See our website for a map.

Please join us next week for our September monthly meeting to learn, mingle and network. Sorry, but this will not be a session you can call in to.

In the last Kōkua Mau Meeting the group decided to view the following 2 sessions, a rebroadcast from the Virtual Palliative Care Conference in early August:

1.   Strengthen relationships and minimize barriers:  Take your communication Skills 'up a notch'.
Speaker: Kathleen Neuendorf, MD, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH

The hospice and palliative care field has emphasized using highly effective communication skills for many years. Colleagues often consult The Cleveland Clinic for its proficiency in talking to patients and families. Yet, despite the use of those skills and our intention to communicate optimally, we sometimes find ourselves in conversations that feel repetitive, counterproductive or may even have us wondering "What just happened?"

In this session, we will discuss communication skills in the context of a relationship and reflect on times that the communication skills we use seem to create barriers when talking to patients instead of strengthening a relationship. For these more challenging conversations, alternative strategies for communication will be proposed and demonstrated to help you take your skills 'up a notch.'

2:  Talk about a sticky wicket!  Managing Pain in the face of suspected drug abuse.
Speaker:Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD, MA, BCPS, CPE, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD

We are in the midst of two enormous, competing public health crises in the US - the epidemic of opioid misuse, abuse and diversion (and deaths) and poorly controlled pain. Hospice and palliative care has not escaped this tug-of-war. Savvy hospice and palliative care practitioners must develop skills to detect drug abuse and diversion in patients, families and caregivers and develop effective strategies to manage the patient/environment. Participants in this session will also learn how to manage recovering opioid abusing patients who are now receiving opioid agonist therapy (e.g., methadone maintenance or buprenorphine) now that they are receiving  hospice care.

Parking is validated and click here for a map and further details.  Please RSVP to Trisha for a basic headcount and to get the slides.  (You can certainly come even if you didn't RSVP.)

Preview of Future Meetings:
October 27:  Spirituality - Anke Flohr, Pacific Health Ministry & JP Sabbithi, Hospice Hawaii
November: No Meeting since time conflicts with Thanksgiving
December 1:  Self Care over the holidays - Felicia Marquez-Wong, St. Francis Hospice and Pat Nishimoto, Tripler Army Medical Center

Advance Care Planning (ACP) conversations with clients are increasingly recognized as best practice and reimbursements rates from are now available.  HMSA has adopted the Medicare codes and will recognize them in their P4Q program. These codes will be recognized for people with HMSA as a primary or secondary payer.

As of January 1, 2016, Medicare began reimbursing healthcare providers for advance care planning (ACP) discussions with Medicare beneficiaries. Authorization for payment is set forth in the November 2015 Final Rule, published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

To help you better understand the new reimbursement rules, we have two free tools for you.   Please visit our website to access the PDF files.

• ACP by the Medicare Learning Network
• FAQs: Advance Care Planning Under Medicare - from Kokua Mau for Hawaii

As you prepare your patients and clients for ACP conversations, we encourage you to look at the free resources available from Kokua Mau.  Having these conversations is an important, but often a difficult and emotionally challenging task and we have resources to help you. The Starter Kit from The Conversation Project is a great resource available for free to all in Hawaii and there is also now a Starter Kit for people with dementia.  

Meeting patients' pain and palliative care needs demands a balance of the best of the art and science of caring. Challenges such as safely and effectively treating pain and maintaining resilience and presence can leave one with the feeling of staring at a blank canvas. This conference has gathered a multi-talented faculty to share the state of both the art and the science of pain management and palliative care, to inspire you with their creative presentations, and take you from that blank canvas to a larger palate of care options to create your masterpiece in meeting these vital patient needs.

This conference has broad appeal to physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and other healthcare professionals.

The PDF flyer with the registration form and program is on our website.

Help us to get our community talking. We have renamed our Speakers Bureau to the Let's Talk Story Program and we are ready to go out into the community to get conversations going.  A team of 19 speakers are ready to go. We have two avenues you can explore to get 'THE Conversation' started.

• Let's Talk Story program
• Free Screening of "Being Mortal"

The goal of our Let's Talk Story Program in a nutshell:

• Learn how to talk with your loved ones about what matters most to you.
• Share about the kind of care you want to receive with your doctor. You'll feel more confident and ready for the future.

Kōkua Mau wants to get our community talking about wishes for care at the end of life. Our new Let's Talk Story Program will go out to community organizations, churches and temples with our free, 2-hour interactive sessions facilitated by Kōkua Mau's trained experts. We know these are not easy conversations but they are some of the most important that you will ever have. Please help us spread the word about this great opportunity to facilitate "The Conversation."

Our goal is to help individuals and families understand decisions they may need to make and find resources and information in our community to talk about their wishes for care at the end of life.

If your group or somebody you know is interested in a free workshop on this important topic, contact Kōkua Mau at info@kokuamau.org or (808) 585-9977.

Please visit our website for more details and download the PDF of the flyers for our Let's Talk Story program.

• Lets Talk Story Program Flyer 1
• Lets Talk Story Program Flyer 2

In response to popular demand we have created (hot off the digital press) our brand new Kokua Mau FaceBook page. We hope FB to become an additional avenue to share information about Advance Care Planning and available resources in Hawaii with a wider community.

Go to www.facebook.com/kokuamau and check it out. If you are on FB please do what you do best, such as liking us and/or sharing our events or post. If there is anything else you would like to see on our FB page, please let us know.

We ask you to join or renew your Kōkua Mau Membership. Membership is tax-deductible and your financial support helps us to maintain and expand our programs. This includes the e-newsletters, free materials for download (including POLST and the new Advance Directive), our well-visited website, various training opportunities, monthly meetings, Palliative Pupus, and our expanding Speakers Bureau.

We look forward to incresead outreach activities with churches, temples and other community groups - let us know if you would like to schedule our Speakers Bureau to visit. We also look forward to ongoing education and networking opportunities for professionals, both those organized by Kōkua Mau and those where we can collaborate with partners.

Membership and donations are an essential part of keeping Kōkua Mau fiscally sustainable.  Last year we had nearly 100 individuals who joined and details for membership are below.  We especially encourage organizational membership by community leaders that support our mission. Please contact Kokua Mau's Executive Director Jeannette Koijane for details.
 
Download a membership form, include a check and and mail it to the Kokua Mau address on the form.  (Renewing members can just send in a check without the form.)

Online: Chose your membership level online or on the PDF file and click the Donate Now button on the right hand side of the webpage. Please put 'membership' in the 'Designation (Optional)' field, click 'add to giving cart' and follow the subsequent steps. We know, the free version of network for good does not look exciting but it is free.

With all donations going into programs we don't offer you another tote bag, but we still do have the ever popular: low cost virtual Kōkua Mau mug.

In thanks for your membership: All members are honored on the Kōkua Mau website and on written materials that are displayed at events

Thank you!
 
Benefits of Joining Kōkua Mau?
 
Kōkua Mau, as a local non-profit, community-benefit organization is fueled by the passion of dedicated volunteers with a lean budget and every penny spent on making our work possible. (Kōkau Mau is not a state agency!) 

• Kōkua Mau e-newsletter providing updates on local and national events, resources and research
• Kōkua Mau website is well visited and constantly updated with free materials for the community
• Monthly Kokua Mau meetings, which usually include a speaker, local updates and networking opportunities
• Palliative Pupus - our cutting-edge, clinical case discussion
• Coming soon: Key documents in 10 languages

For over 17 years, Kōkua Mau has been a voice for outstanding hospice and palliative care and services in Hawai'i, providing high-quality information, trainings and ever growing networking opportunities.