Pensar a organização de serviços de Cuidados Paliativos

In order to answer serious or terminally ill patients and family‘s needs, Palliative Care must be, they need to be organized in an integrated model with different levels of provision of care. These levels are palliative approach, general palliative care, specialist palliative care and centres of excellence. This model should be implemented in an appropriate geographical distribution and based on credible formulation of the needs. The palliative care can be pro- vided by the articulation of different types of palliative care services in several settings: home palliative care teams, palliative care units, hospital palliative care support teams, and day- care centres. Of these, homecare teams are vital because only these teams can achive the desire of the patients to spend the last time of their life and dead at home. Palliative care alone generate a significant decrease of the health costs of the care of these patients, if they are integrated early and if are delivered with high quality.