PPSV is Pleased to Announce Judith Buckalew’s Appointment to the Advisory Board of the National Priorities Partnership - Palliative and End of Life Care Work Group
September 10, 2009
Ms. Buckalew is a Principal at PPSV and focuses her practice on federal legislative and regulatory matters with specializations in healthcare and education legislation, appropriations funding, palliative care issues, and counterterrorism issues. She holds a Masters from the UCLA School of Public Health, served as an intelligence officer in the US Naval Reserve, and is a registered nurse who continues to work as a hospice and palliative care nurse several days a month. Ms. Buckalew states, “I am pleased to have been selected for this important committee. Many Americans don’t understand what palliative care is and what comfort it can bring to the dying and their families. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and I look forward to helping this great organization achieve its communications and education goals.”
The American Nurses Association and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association nominated Ms. Buckalew to the Advisory Board of the National Priorities Partnership Palliative and End-of-Life Care Work Group. The National Priorities Partnership is a collaborative effort of 28 organizations from every part of the healthcare system. The Partners, convened by the National Quality Forum, “represent multiple stakeholders drawn from the public and private sectors. These organizations believe that it will require the work of many to achieve the transformational change that is needed for the United States to have a high-performing, high-value healthcare system. As a first step, the Partners have identified a set of National Priorities and Goals to help focus performance improvement efforts on high-leverage areas—those with the most potential to result in substantial improvements in health and healthcare— and thus accelerate fundamental change in our healthcare delivery system.”
The Palliative and End-of-life Care Work Group, which Ms. Buckalew is joining, promotes “healthcare capable of promising dignity, comfort, companionship, and spiritual support to patients and families facing advanced illness or dying, fully in synchrony with all of the resources that community, friends, and family can bring to bear at the end of life.” The Work Group will work to “ensure that high-quality palliative and/or hospice care programs are available and that all patients eligible for such care and with access to such services will receive a timely referral. All healthcare professionals will need to understand the value of palliative and hospice care and the advantages of such care throughout many stages of illness, and communities will need to have an adequate number of certified hospice and palliative care specialists available.”
Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville is a Washington, DC-based law firm that focuses on healthcare, education and the law of tax-exempt organizations. For more information about the National Priorities Partnership - Palliative and End-of-life Care Work Group, please visit www.nationalprioritiespartnership.org or contact Judi Buckalew at 202.466.6550 or judi.buckalew@ppsv.com.
