National Quality Forum announces new report on framework and preferred practices for palliative and hospice care quality

WASHINGTON, PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Quality Forum (NQF) today announced the availability of a new report on a national framework and preferred practices for palliative and hospice care quality.

The NQF recently identified palliative and hospice care as national priority areas for healthcare quality improvement. Palliative care refers to patient and family centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing and treating suffering.

Hospice care is a service delivery system that provides palliative care for patients who have a limited life expectancy and require comprehensive support as they enter the terminal stage of an illness or condition. The executive summary of this report and the list of preferred practices can be found on the NQF web site, http://www.qualityforum.org.

The report details consensus standards endorsed by NQF's more than 300 member organizations through its formal Consensus Development Process. As such, the voluntary consensus standards have special legal standing.

"The palliative care and hospice framework endorsed in this report is intended as the first step in creating a comprehensive quality measurement and reporting system for palliative care and hospice services. This framework also served as a roadmap for the identification of a set of preferred practices aimed at improving palliative and hospice care. These NQF-endorsed practices address the Institute of Medicine's six dimensions of quality-safe, effective, timely, patient centered, efficient and equitable," said Janet M. Corrigan, PhD, MBA, President and CEO of the NQF.

Two important partners in the production of this report include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

NQF is a voluntary, consensus standard-setting organization. The mission of the National Quality Forum is to improve the quality of American healthcare by setting national riorities and goals for performance improvement, endorsing national consensus standards for easuring and publicly reporting on performance, and promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs. NQF, a non-profit organization qualityforum.org) with diverse stakeholders across the public and private health sectors, was established in 1999 and is based in Washington, D.C.