The United States’ primary concern is the need to monitor and improve the quality of palliative and end-of-life cancer care. The concepts that are currently used condition to be optimized and operationalized similarly.
Based on the same, this study focuses on identifying existing palliative care process measures and synthesized the measures to aid stakeholder prioritization to facilitate health system implementation in patients with advanced cancer.
The research under consideration reviewed MEDLINE/PubMed-indexed articles for process quality measures related to palliative and end-of-life care for patients with advanced cancer, supplemented by expert input.
On reviewing the published literature, one identified 226 special measures from 23 measure sources, grouped into 64 measure concepts within 12 groups like advance care planning, pain, dyspnea, palliative care–specific issues, other specific symptoms, comprehensive assessment, and others . All the standards so obtained were basically grouped into two prominent aspects: “measure concepts” and higher-level groups.
The measure concepts covered a broad spectrum of care from acute symptom management to advance care planning and psychosocial needs. Understanding the process and better categorization can help stakeholders adopt the quality measures for improving palliative and end-of-life care quality in patients with advanced cancer.