title: The quality imperative for palliative care.
abstract: Palliative medicine must prioritize the routine assessment of the quality of clinical care we provide. This includes regular assessment, analysis, and reporting of data on quality. Assessment of quality informs opportunities for improvement and demonstrates to our peers and ourselves the value of our efforts. In fact, continuous messaging of the value of palliative care services is needed to sustain our discipline; this requires regularly evaluating the quality of our care. As the reimbursement mechanisms for health care in the U.S. shift from fee-for-service to fee-for-value models, palliative care will be expected to report robust data on quality of care. We must move beyond demonstrating to our constituents (including patients and referrers), "here is what we do," and increase the focus on "this is how well we do it" and "let us see how we can do it better." It is incumbent on palliative care professionals to lead these efforts. This involves developing standardized methods to collect data without adding additional burden, comparing and sharing our experiences to promote discipline-wide quality assessment and improvement initiatives, and demonstrating our intentions for quality improvement on the clinical frontline.
authors: Duke Cancer Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA; Center for Learning Health Care, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Electronic address: arif.kamal@duke.edu.
authors: Arif H
authors: AH
authors: Kamal
authors: Division of Geriatric Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
authors: Laura C
authors: LC
authors: Hanson
authors: Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors: David J
authors: DJ
authors: Casarett
authors: Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
authors: Sydney M
authors: SM
authors: Dy
authors: Palliative Care Program, Division of Hospital Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
authors: Steven Z
authors: SZ
authors: Pantilat
authors: Center for Aging, Health and Humanities, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
authors: Dale
authors: D
authors: Lupu
authors: Duke Cancer Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA; Center for Learning Health Care, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, North Carolina, USA.
authors: Amy P
authors: AP
authors: Abernethy
mesh_terms: D018166:Health Care Reform; D006801:Humans; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012107:Research Design; D014481:United States
keywords: Quality; palliative care