Quality Improvement Pearls for the Palliative Care and Hospice Professional

Abstract

Rapid changes in how palliative care clinicians are evaluated and paid present an imperative for clinicians to adeptly and routinely perform quality improvement in usual practice. Like empathic communication and facilitating goals of care discussions, quality improvement skills must be learned, honed, and practiced, so identifying problems and brainstorming solutions becomes a natural component of delivering serious illness care. Using our experience in both failures and successes in performing quality improvement, here we provide a prioritized list of 10 pearls specifically aimed to palliative care and hospice professionals. We aim to demystify quality improvement, highlight areas where rigor and a systematic approach are needed for success, and offer our own lessons learned and mistakes made to promote success for our colleagues and our field.

Keywords: Quality improvement; health care quality; palliative care practice.