Quality of palliative care for patients with advanced cancer in a community consortium.

Background: Measuring quality of care delivery is essential to palliative care program growth and sustainability. We formed the Carolinas Consortium for Palliative Care and collected a quality data registry to monitor our practice and inform quality improvement efforts.

Measures: We analyzed all palliative care consultations in patients with cancer in our quality registry from March 2008 through October 2011 using 18 palliative care quality measures.

Palliative and hospice care in gynecologic cancer: a review.

Despite the increasing availability of palliative care, oncology providers often misunderstand and underutilize these resources. The goals of palliative care are relief of suffering and provision of the best possible quality of life for both the patient and her family, regardless of where she is in the natural history of her disease. Lack of understanding and awareness of the services provided by palliative care physicians underlie barriers to referral.

Cost-effectiveness of early palliative care intervention in recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Objective: To determine if early palliative care intervention in patients with recurrent, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer is potentially cost saving or cost-effective.

Methods: A decision model with a 6 month time horizon evaluated routine care versus routine care plus early referral to a palliative medicine specialist (EPC) for recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Model parameters included rates of inpatient admissions, emergency department (ED) visits, chemotherapy administration, and quality of life (QOL).