Palliative care and quality management: The core principles of quality improvement and their utility in designing clinical programs for end of life care and complex case management models

Over the past decade, efforts to define, build, and improve palliative care and care for complex chronic illness have been commonplace at both the micro- or organizational- and macro- or healthcare organization, payment, and regulatory policy-levels. Having grown largely out of the hospice movement, palliative care for many represents all that hospice does so well, and by extending hospice's reach offers a promise of comfortable and compassionate care earlier in the disease process than hospice is often able to.