LifeCircle Partners Improving End of Life Care was born out of the USD Sanford School of Medicine, Department of Neurosciences. The Advisory Board was composed of people passionate about LifeCircle’s purpose and included a diverse group of professionals from multiple organizations who oversaw the activities. Chairs of the Advisory Board included Dr. Judith Batchelor, Dr. Susan Schrader and Dr. LuAnn Eidsness. A flagship program of LifeCircle was the Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Seminar (IPS) which trained many nursing, chaplaincy, social work and medical students across the state on how an interdisciplinary team can support someone at end of life.
In addition to professional education, LifeCircle has a strong history of policy work including help with development and passage of two legislative initiatives that created transportable medical orders: Comfort One and SD MOST. LifeCircle also provided public education in the form of community forums for Dying to Know (D2K 2004) and advance care planning.
LifeCircle transitioned under the South Dakota Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) umbrella in the spring of 2022 where it strived to carry on the original mission: to provide professional and public education and public policy/advocacy but expanded to also include improving care for those living with serious illness. Creating and passing legislation for a state definition of palliative care; developing guardianship, advance care planning and hospice training; and implementing a website full of resources for the public and professionals are some of the ways in which the mission was carried out.
July 1, 2025, begins another chapter for LifeCircle – South Dakota’s Hospice and Palliative Care Network. Work done by the South Dakota Coalition for the Advancement of Serious Illness Care (SD CASIC) Network (funded through a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) planning grant in 2024-2025), demonstrated that a more structured organization would help LifeCircle to continue the work started in 1999.
Moving forward, LifeCircle will use an interdisciplinary, statewide inter-institutional advisory board, work committees, peer support and regulatory expertise to:
- Develop Standardized and Targeted Education for healthcare professionals to deliver high quality primary palliative care
- Create Unified Messaging and Collaborative Networks for palliative care and hospice care
- Participate in Policy and Reimbursement Advancement using other states’ models to expand access to serious illness care
- Create Rural Access and Workforce Champions to help scale palliative care and hospice care
If you have a passion for this work, please REGISTER HERE to join the network to improve serious illness care for South Dakotans.
