What is the TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice?

The TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice is comprehensive, interdisciplinary care for patients with advanced illness whose treatment goals emphasize quality of life. It is offered in the hospital, skilled nursing facility, assisted living facility, adult care home, or in a patient's own home.

TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine is offered at the same time as other appropriate medical treatments. It is a consultative service and the providers coordinate care in conjunction with the patient's primary care physician and the patients other specialists in order to meet the patient and family goals.

TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice

• Physicians with board-certification in hospice and palliative care medicine
• Nurse Practitioner with board-certification in hospice and palliative care medicine
• Two licensed social workers
• Registered Nurse

How Do I Consult?

Consultations will be accepted in the hospital, skilled nursing facility and in the community. Call (520) 618-1080 to initiate a consultation. You will be connected with a member of the TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice who will assist you with the referral process and setting up a visit.

Goals May Include:

Managing difficult symptoms

• Lessening pain, nausea, anxiety, fatigue, depression, shortness of breath, constipation, loss of appetite and other symptoms that may accompany serious illness or side effects of treatment.

Addressing changing goals of care

• Helping patients and families consider care options and make decisions about quality of life
• Interpreting the benefits and burdens of care such as tests, surgeries or medication
• Helping patients and families determine when or if to begin or discontinue treatments

Enhancing patient and family support

• Supporting communication in complicated family situations
• Provide spiritual and emotional support throughout the course of illness
• Promote the best quality of life
• Assist with end of life decisions
• If death is near, help the patient and family create meaning by supporting reflection about the patient's life, repair relationships and create memories

Assisting with discharge from the hospitals and other settings

• Helping with needed referrals for care at home
• Assisting with placement in other levels of care
• Coordination of insurance or community services

When to Consider a TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Consultation?

• Recurrent hospital admissions or ER visits for advanced illnesses such as emphysema, congestive heart failure or cancer
• Lack of response to curative therapies and changing goals of care
• Assistance with end-of-life planning, including advance directives
• Conflicts among the patient and/or the family regarding illness management or treatment course
• Difficult symptom management compromising the patient's ability to continue treatment or maintain quality of life
• Spiritual distress or loss of hope
• Manage palliative wound care (non-healing wounds)
• Prolonged Intensive Care Unit (ICU) stay, second prognosis or assistance with withdrawing life sustaining equipment

We participate in a referral pattern that utilizes all hospices in the City of Tucson consistent with our core values.
To begin a referral, please call the TLC office, (520) 618-1080.