Care Without Barriers

While the global calamity of the coronavirus has separated us from one another, racism and social tension should never separate us from our shared humanity.

We at Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo need to be clear: We stand with those who are outraged, frustrated, grief stricken and afraid. We recognize and support the inequities and undue burdens experienced by individuals of different races or ethnicities, and strive to be a force for positive change in the care of our patients and each other.

As a health care organization, we must also recognize that although illnesses such as COVID-19 are often touted as the “great equalizer,” they are not. While we are all at risk of infection, we are not equally affected by the illness. In fact, this pandemic has only amplified existing disparities by disproportionality impacting minority and lower socioeconomic groups. We cannot be indifferent to this reality.

More specifically, the common barriers in receiving high-quality hospice and palliative care are:

• Financial and health insurance barriers
• Communication chasm between patients and doctors
• Family behaviors and beliefs
• Cultural and religious barriers

As an organization, we embrace the differences of the individuals we live with, work with and serve. We believe in the need to remove barriers to care and prioritize the work on strategies to ensure fairness and accessibility of our program services to all. We are focused on developing and implementing programs that address and improve access to health care in order to reach diverse and underserved communities within Western New York.