Services for Physicians and Other Providers

Collaborative Non-Medical Support for Your Patients and Their Families

Partnering to Improve Whole-Person Care

In today’s healthcare environment, physicians and providers often carry the weight of delivering expert care under tight time and resource constraints. While medical needs are at the center of your work, patients and their families often have equally pressing non-medical needs—emotional, spiritual, and practical—that can directly affect their well-being.

That’s where Present for You can help. Our serious illness companions and end-of-life doulas work alongside your medical team, bridging the gap between clinical care and the day-to-day realities your patients face. We can be the eyes, ears, and hands where you and your staff can’t be, ensuring no aspect of a patient’s care journey goes unattended.

Beyond Patient Support

We complement patient-specific medical care plans by catering more broadly to families' emotional, spiritual, and practical needs as their loved ones endure serious illness and the later stages of life.

Social Determinants of Health

By integrating non-medical support for families, you can ensure greater well-being for patients through improved social determinants of health.

The Benefits of Partnering with Present for You

Some patients struggle to navigate the healthcare system or understand medical terminology. Others feel overwhelmed, fearful, or concerned about losing their independence. These factors can affect adherence, communication, and overall quality of care.

Our team can:

Help patients navigate the medical system and understand their diagnosis, results, and treatment options.
Manage communication among care team members to ensure everyone is aligned with the patient’s wishes.
Provide emotional support during overwhelming situations or difficult conversations.
Assist patients in maintaining dignity and autonomy.
Share day-to-day insights with you that may influence treatment decisions.

Many of our doulas and companions have medical backgrounds, making them fluent in clinical processes and terminology, while still offering the compassionate presence that families need most.

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Examples of Non-Medical Care We Provide

Managing communication between patients and medical professionals.
Coordinating and escorting patients to appointments.
Providing emotional and spiritual support during challenging moments.
Sitting with patients and families to listen, process, and guide.
Supporting patients in maintaining comfort and quality of life as illness progresses.

While providers know how to help from the medical side of patient care, they are limited when the patient has non-medical needs. Those non-medical needs will still have an effect on the health and comfort of the patient, but addressing those needs may fall outside the reach of medical providers. Doulas and Serious Illness companions can bridge that care gap.

PFY Doulas and Serious Illness Companions can help cover the non-medical needs outside the reach of medical providers, which can ultimately make the care from the providers more effective by allowing them to focus on their specialty without worry that their patient’s care is falling short in other areas.
Our Doulas will have insight into the day-to-day needs of the patient, which may influence their treatment. They can communicate this back to the providers, resulting in more well rounded care for the patient.

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A Streamlined Collaborative Process

1. Patient Referrals

Upon diagnosis of a serious illness, or when a patient enters the final stages of life, you refer them to Present for You.

2. Assessment and Care Planning

We meet with the patient and family to determine the scope of non-medical support needed, then match them with one or more Present for You companions or doulas.

3. Ongoing Non-Medical Support

Our team provides compassionate, non-judgmental support tailored to emotional, spiritual, and practical needs that complement your medical care plan.

4. Feedback and Coordination

We log each visit in our community care platform and share timely updates with your designated contact. Over time, we can provide practice-specific data to demonstrate the value of non-medical care. We can also interface with your EMR for seamless information sharing.

The Outcome

By working together, we help you focus on what you do best: delivering expert medical care while ensuring your patients and their families receive the holistic, whole-person support they deserve. This partnership not only improves patient satisfaction but can also reduce unnecessary interventions and associated costs.

FAQs

Answers to common questions about Present for You’s collaborations with physicians and other providers.

What makes Present for You’s non-medical support relevant to a medical practice?

Present for You was founded by medical professionals who recognized the growing gap between what healthcare teams can realistically provide and the broader needs of patients and families. This gap has widened in recent years due to increasing specialization, workforce shortages, and the strain accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our role is to complement, not replace, clinical care. We focus on the emotional, spiritual, and practical needs that fall outside the scope of medical expertise, allowing physicians and medical teams to concentrate on delivering high-quality, patient-specific treatment.

How are Present for You’s services different from those of a palliative care medical practice?

Our strength lies in the fact that we are not medical providers, though our organization was founded on medical expertise. We begin with the understanding that not every challenge requires a medical intervention. Our serious illness companions and end-of-life doulas are trained to meet patients and families where they are, providing non-medical solutions that reduce unnecessary use of clinical resources. At the same time, we know when to step aside so that medical teams can deliver the specialized care they are best equipped to provide.

How do you screen and train your serious illness companions and end-of-life doulas?

All Present for You team members undergo industry-standard background checks. We require training from reputable doula education organizations, most often the University of Vermont or the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA), in addition to our own in-house serious illness companion training. We also maintain partnerships with the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) to offer ongoing palliative care education.
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If your organization has additional screening or onboarding requirements, we are happy to participate in those processes to ensure seamless integration into your care model.