Measuring hospice care: the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization National Hospice Data Set.

Hospice has seen rapid growth in recent years, but there is a lack of consistency among hospices when it comes to compliance with standards of care. Consequently, hospices vary in performance and in services they provide. With state hospice organizations, the NHPCO developed a National Data Set (NDS) intended to understand demographics, practices, and outcomes; illustrate industry effectiveness; facilitate communication of industry legislative needs; and to support agency performance and improvement.

Performance measurement now.

We are at the beginning of a significant increase in the use of performance measurement in hospice. Our resources for measuring performance are improving, while our environment is increasingly challenging. It is worth revisiting the goal of performance measurement in order to know your organization so well that you can continuously identify and act on the specific improvement opportunities that will have the greatest impact on overall results.

Benchmarking: the backbone of successful performance improvement.

Although there are many valid applications for comparative data--sometimes simply "knowing where you stand" is valuable--it is time for home care agencies to use benchmarking that moves beyond that point. Benchmarking is integral to organizational and management strategies whose ultimate goal is to improve, and not simply measure, performance. Peer benchmarks can be a critical resource in addressing the full spectrum of management challenges.