Providers will see a change to Alaska's Comfort One as we transition to POLST
Front-line EMS and healthcare providers can anticipate upcoming changes to the Comfort One Program as regulations for Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) have been signed by the Lieutenant Governor and took effect on May 6, 2021.
The Comfort One program was established in Alaska in 1996 to assist providers in both identifying and continuing decisions regarding end-of-life care that have been made by the patient and their family to be facilitated by providers within the palliative care continuum.
POLST is an approach to improving palliative or end-of-life care that was created in 1991 in Oregon and is or currently being implemented by many states. The difference between the POLST and Comfort One programs is the portability and cross-care recognition between different levels of providers that patients and their families might expect to come in contact with while care is being provided during this process, to include EMS, home healthcare, hospice, emergency departments. To facilitate the change from Comfort One to POLST, a collaboration between different levels of providers like palliative care specialists, home and extended healthcare, EMS, and emergency room physicians are meeting and working together to ensure that POLST is implemented with representation, support, and education for providers and the public.
How to Get Comfort One Information
