Measuring effectiveness in community-based palliative care programs: A systematic review

Evidence for change: measurements of quality and effectiveness among community-based palliative care programmes

“…Overall, the majority of the CBPC programmes achieved positive results 1. Regardless of country or programme, CBPC programmes strongly impact the location of death 1.…”

“…An interdisciplinary care team was described in all 52 CPBC programmes. Forty-seven CBPC programmes provided care team composition details; nurses featured most prominently (82%) 1. Services reported among the CBPC programmes varied: symptom management and care coordination (100%), patient and caregiver education (30%) and telephonic support services (26%) 1…”

“…Overall, the majority of the CBPC programmes achieved positive results 1. Regardless of country or programme, CBPC programmes strongly impact the location of death 1. Patients of CBPC programmes experienced decreased hospital utilisation, length of stay if hospitalised and ED visits (with some disease-specific exceptions).…”

“…Community-based palliative care (CBPC) programmes can improve quality of life (QoL), decrease symptom burden and decrease hospital utilisation 1…”

“…Yet little is known about how these CBPC programmes measure effectiveness and/or success. Vernon et al provide the first systematic review on this topic 1…”