Best Practices for Providing Patient-Centered Tele-Palliative Care to Cancer Patients

Simple Summary Telemedicine has become a permanent platform for delivering palliative care. Our review highlights the best practices that palliative care teams can incorporate to provide high-quality, interdisciplinary virtual care to cancer patients. Cancer patients receiving palliative care may face significant challenges in attending outpatient appointments. Patients on controlled substances such as opioids require frequent visits and often rely on assistive devices and/or a caregiver to accompany them to these visits. In addition, pain, fatigue, and shortness of breath may magnify the challenges associated with in-person visits. The rapid adoption of telemedicine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be highly beneficial for advanced cancer patients and caregivers. The hurried COVID-19-related implementation of telemedicine is now evolving into a permanent platform for providing palliative care. This review will focus on the best practices and recommendations to deliver high-quality, interdisciplinary tele-palliative care.