Conformance with supportive care quality measures is associated with better quality of life in patients with cancer receiving palliative care.

Purpose: As palliative care further integrates into cancer care, descriptions of how supportive care quality measures improve patient outcomes are necessary to establish best practices.

Methods: We assessed the relationship between conformance to 18 palliative care quality measures and quality of life from data obtained using our novel point-of-care, electronic quality monitoring system, the Quality Data Collection Tool for Palliative Care (QDACT-PC). All patients with cancer from January 2008 through March 2011 seen in the Carolinas Palliative Care Consortium were evaluated for demographic, disease, prognostic, performance status, and measure conformance variables.

Collecting data on quality is feasible in community-based palliative care.

Background: Quality measurement in palliative care requires robust data from standardized data collection processes. We developed and tested the feasibility of the Quality Data Collection Tool version 1.0 (QDACTv1.