The current healthcare system is not built for individuals with serious illnesses. These individuals can benefit from palliative care, which focuses on quality of life and symptom relief. Alternative payment models that incorporate palliative care are in development. Yet, the challenges of expanding these models of care are substantial. Betsy recently died after a sixteen-year… Read More »
There’s a box on my mom’s desk. It’s smaller than a shoe box, and unremarkable unless you know what’s in it, how it got there and why it represents several important things that are wrong with how we treat people with terminal cancer. The box contains 28 doses of two drugs, or one “cycle” of… Read More »
In narrative medicine, the clinician seeks to understand a patient’s story of their illness and their value system. Narrative medicine helps clinicians establish an empathic and therapeutic relationship with a patient, ideally resulting in a person-centered treatment plan. Rita Charon coined that term and approach in 2001 and expanded on it in numerous subsequent publications. Several sessions… Read More »
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to empower consumers to make informed healthcare decisions. CMS also wants providers to improve the quality of care they provide. One step towards accomplishing both of these goals is by public reporting of quality measures (QM). However, with multiple quality measures focusing on different care processes–all of which… Read More »
One of the primary goals of measuring and publicly reporting quality of care is to empower consumers to make informed health care decisions. Numerous national efforts, many initiated as a result of requirements in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, are underway to make information about quality of care available to the public. Despite… Read More »