Delivering specialized palliative care in the community: a new role for nurse practitioners.

The rising population of older Americans with advanced illness challenges current care delivery models. We use the metaphor of advanced illness as a difficult journey and propose a specific role, that of the "OACIS NP [nurse practitioner]," who helps provide a place of refuge during this journey. "OACIS" is an acronym for Optimizing Advanced Complex Illness Support, a program to provide home-based palliative medical care.