Using Metrics to Grow Your Palliative Care Program (527)

Abstract

Objectives 1. Describe the essential operational, customer, and clinical metrics that a non-hospice palliative care program should measure. 2. Examine a range of data collection tools that best meet the needs of small/medium/large palliative care programs. 3. Design a process to interpret and report metric data that will maximize opportunities for program sustainability and growth. Data collection and analysis are vital for strategic planning, quality improvement, and demonstration of palliative care program impact to hospital administrators, private funders, and policymakers. Global program standards and preferred practices have been established by the National Quality Forum, the Center to Advance Palliative Care, and the National Consensus Project. To provide more detailed information to palliative care program directors, the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) began a consensus process to outline essential Non-Hospice Palliative Care Program operational, clinical, and customer metrics. Operational metrics are those designed to capture key demographic data about a consultation service or inpatient unit. Clinical metrics are measures of patient care, such as pain and symptom management. Customer metrics refer to data about clinical quality from key palliative care stakeholders, such as families or referring clinicians. The CAPC consensus process has been completed and published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. This workshop will help attendees operationalize the CAPC consensus recommendations. Learners will review the consensus recommendations and then discuss available measurement tools and techniques that can be used to gather, interpret, and report their measurement data. Finally, learners will apply this information to develop a measurement Action Plan for their individual programs.