title: Assessing Quality of Care for the Myelodysplastic Syndromes.
abstract: Measuring the quality of care for patients with chronic cancers is difficult, especially for heterogeneous malignancies such as the myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Recent work suggests that improvements may be needed in the quality of diagnostic, treatment, and end-of-life care for patients with these syndromes. Moreover, rigorous assessment of factors that are necessary to deliver high-quality care such as preferred method of decision-making and pre-treatment quality of life are often overlooked. Finally, a key component of quality care is that it is received equitably across different patient populations, yet several recent studies suggest that there are financial, educational, race-ethnic, and age-related barriers to equitable MDS care.
authors: Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA.
authors: Zachary A K
authors: ZA
authors: Frosch
authors: Division of Population Sciences and Center for Leukemia, Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 450 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, USA. gregory_abel@dfci.harvard.edu.
authors: Gregory A
authors: GA
authors: Abel
mesh_terms: D006397:Hematinics / Q000627:therapeutic use; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D009190:Myelodysplastic Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000191:economics; D011788:Quality of Life
chemical_list: D006397:Hematinics
keywords: Access and evaluation; Myelodysplastic syndromes; Patient-centered care; Quality indicators; Quality of health care; Quality of life