Palliative care helps people with serious and life-threatening illnesses live well. It improves quality of life, enhances dignity and wellbeing, reduces caregiver distress, facilitates the provision of goal concordant care, and reduces health-care costs. The FLA region has increased need for palliative care resources because it has an older population living multiple serious health conditions and higher death rates than the provincial average.
The Palliative Care Partnership Working Group is striving to improve this situation.
Current Challenges
- Access to palliative care is inadequate for many populations. those particularly underserved include: persons who are Indigenous, homeless and vulnerably housed, incarcerated, and those in rural and remote communities.
- There is a lack of palliative care for those who want to stay at home for their end of life journey, as well as a lack of access to specialist palliative care for more complex needs.
- Providers need better training and digital support to carry out the complex care for quality end of life.
What we are working towards
Having a connected and equitable, community-based program for palliative care that will:
- enable people to remain in their homes and communities
- support providers with the training and tools needed
The Palliative Care Partnership is working with Health Homes and primary care providers to increase training and capacity for palliative care. This includes building a regional palliative care pathway for primary care providers.
Palliative Care Resources
For Patients & Caregivers
Community members can access many resources, such as advance care planning, palliative services, managing symptoms, and much more.
For Health Care Providers
Providers can find many resources for advance care conversations, end-of-life care, assessment tools, DNR form, MAID, hospices, death certificate, and more.
Grief & Bereavement Guide
This grief and bereavement guide includes resources from local groups, online sources, funeral homes, provincial authorities, Indigenous perspectives and more.
Palliative Care Partnership Projects
Vulnerable Population-Focused Palliative Care Strategies
The FLA OHT is working with a group of local partners, with support from Healthcare Excellence Canada’s Improving Equity in Access to Palliative Care Collaborative. This initiative fosters inter-agency connections and improved access to palliative care services for those who face significant systemic and structural barriers.
- Direct-referral pathway established
- Palliative care physicians work side-by-side with workers who have therapeutic rapport with clients
- More effective with patients who have been hesitant to seek care in the past
Indigenous-Focused Palliative Care Strategies
Led by principal investigators Dr. Amrita Roy and Dr. Sarah Funnell, the community-based research collaborative is working to understand lived experiences with palliative and end-of-life care for Indigenous people in the FLA region.
This research includes ongoing engagement with Indigenous communities and the facilitation of Talking Circles or participants’ preferred method of participation.
Advancing Primary Palliative Care Strategies
A pilot project took place between 2023 and 2025 which promoted earlier identification of patients who would benefit from a palliative approach to care.
The pilot involved embedded palliative care specialist clinics at Maple and Greenwood primary care sites with over 40 patients referred.
A process was also developed to match unattached patients with a primary palliative care provider through collaboration with Ontario Health atHome and multiple community partners.
NEWS (scroll < >)
FLA OHT introduces online hub for palliative care resources
February 17, 2026. FLA OHT launched two webpages to support patients, caregivers, families and health-care providers by centralizing palliative care resources. They include information, practical tools and links to local services in one place.
Meet the FLA OHT Palliative Care Clinical Coach
May 26, 2025. A Palliative Care Clinical Coach is a healthcare professional who provides expert guidance, mentorship, and support to healthcare teams across diverse care settings. Palliative Care Clinical Coaches collaborate with various community health organizations.
Hospice House provides compassionate end-of-life care
April 22, 2025. As a committed partner of the FLA OHT, Providence Care is helping advance one of our key priorities: supporting high-quality, compassionate end-of-life care. Providence Care’s AB Smith Homestead House officially opened on March 19.
Hospice Kingston Residence Construction Project
March 11, 2024. Construction is set to begin on Kingston’s first hospice residence. Centrally located in Providence Village at 1200 Princess Street, the ten suite residence will provide 24-hour care and support services in a comfortable, home-like setting to residents, their families and loved ones.
Palliative Care Working Group achievements in 2023
February 16, 2024. Palliative Care Working Group is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for individuals facing serious illnesses and their families. Over the past year, the group has achieved notable success in three key ongoing projects.
Palliative Care Partnerships: exciting updates
February 2, 2023. As part of the FLA OHT’s ongoing commitment to working toward a more efficient, integrated and equitable health-care model, the Palliative Care Partnership is striving to have a connected, community-based program for palliative care.
Spotlight on Dr. Justyna Nowak
January 18, 2022. Learn more about Dr. Justyna Nowak, a family physician at Greenwood Medical Centre, who also cares for long term care. She speaks about her work, her passion and her connection with the FLA OHT.
Who's involved?
Community members, hospice agencies, long term and community care organizations, academics, primary care teams, palliative care specialists and municipalities from across the region are working together.
Community members may include people with lived experience of palliative care, family, caregivers, Indigenous urban and rural locations, spiritual health, and others.