Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fontana Medical Center - Facility

The main campus houses a 450-bed hospital, family medicine center and residency, emergency department, and all major medical and surgical specialty clinics.
The medical center serves a diverse population in gender, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic background.

Fellows will rotate at the Kaiser Permanente Fontana and Ontario Medical Centers for their inpatient acute care experiences, including Inpatient Palliative Care consultations, Pediatric Palliative Care, Radiation Oncology, and other elective rotations. The Fontana and Ontario Medical Centers are teaching sites for other ACGME residency programs, fellows will also provide teaching to family medicine, internal medicine, and psychiatry residents during their palliative medicine rotations and during shared didactics. The Fontana and Ontario Medical Centers serve the majority of San Bernardino County, a section of eastern Los Angeles County, and the northwest portion of Riverside County. Per our 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment, this area encompasses more than 2.2 million people; more than 50% are of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, nearly 20% live in poverty, 15% are uninsured, and nearly 20% of adults have no high school diploma. Fellows will have the ability to follow their patients seen on the inpatient consult service longitudinally after discharge in the outpatient palliative clinic, home-based palliative care program, and/or on home hospice services within the Kaiser Permanente integrated health system.

The Outpatient Palliative Medicine clinic is primarily based at Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center. It is a stand-alone department, working closely with other specialists in Hematology/Oncology, Cardiology, Pulmonology, Primary Care, and other fields. Fellows complete longitudinal rotations that co-exist with their inpatient palliative consult experience. This integration allows for expanded continuity of care across settings and allows the fellow to better appreciate transitions of care common within hospice and palliative medicine. The clinic serves over 1000 patients annually with a wide breadth of pathology such as cancer, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and neurodegenerative diseases. The outpatient clinic focuses on early intervention in these serious illnesses. Fellows will gain skills in pain management, symptom management, treating complications of cancer therapies, communicating skillfully with difficult news, and guiding treatment goals throughout changes in prognosis. The outpatient clinic has opportunities for fellows to learn interventional symptom relief skills such as ultrasound-guided paracenteses, joint injections, and trigger point injections. A dedicated outpatient interdisciplinary team, with RN case managers and social workers, work alongside the fellow to ensure access to community resources, facilitate management of urgent symptom crises, and provide emotional support for our patients.

Fellows will spend their Long Term Care rotations at the Inland Valley Rehabilitation Center, and the Upland Rehabilitation and Care Center.