Diane Rapaport, MD, Willow House Board of Directors

Diane Rapaport, MD, is Senior Medical Director for VITAS Health Care in the Chicagoland area. She consults with patients attending physicians, supervises the program’s team physicians, and provides guidance to VITAS staff. She educates practicing physicians and other healthcare professionals regarding the benefits of hospice and palliative care for patients and their families. She serves as a team physician and personally attends patient in their homes.

Prior to joining VITAS in 2000, Dr. Rapaport served as the Medical Director of the Ambulatory Care Center at Mercy Hospital and as Associate Director of the hospitals med-surgical intensive care unit. In 1985 she developed a program on medical ethics and end-of-life care training, and is currently the Director of Ethics, End of Life Care and Palliative Care Training, Mercy Hospital, Chicago, IL. She is an onsite trainer for University of Chicago Fellows at Vitas Inpatient Unit. She serves on the ethics committee at Mercy Hospital, Vitas, and the Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She was appointed Section Chief of Palliative Care in 2014 at Mercy Hospital. She is Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago, IL.

For more than 20 years, she has given more than 400 presentations to medical professionals and families on subjects ranging from pain and non pain symptom management to nutrition, hydration and ethical dilemmas in end-of-life care. She conducts a monthly lecture series on palliative care, medical ethics and pain management at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. She has lectured and trained professionals throughout the Chicago area on the compassionate removal of ventilators for hospice patients. She has presented to the Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine on Prognostication, Compassionate Withdrawal of Ventilators and Regulatory issues.

Dr. Rapaport has been a guest editor for the American Medical Association’s online Virtual Mentor, writing on the challenges of DNR (do not resuscitate) orders and the importance of cultural differences at the end of life and speaker at AAHPM conferences on Compassionate Removal of Ventilators and Predicting Prognosis.
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