Promoting Excellence : Financial Implications of Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care

Too many Americans die badly and are not getting the care they want. One of the primary factors underlying the current crisis in America and call for change in the way people die involves financing. Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care, a National Program Office of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, addresses this topic in its monograph, "Financial Implications of End-of-Life Care."

The monograph features six innovative demonstration projects that successfully provide concurrent life-extending and palliative care for patients with chronic and life-limiting illnesses. These projects not only demonstrate the feasibility of this approach and its acceptability to patients and clinicians; they also show its potential for containing costs. The full monograph offers snapshots of new models for delivering palliative care that are designed to fit within existing systems and settings of care. An executive summary briefly describes the design of each project and cost savings for the health care system. (See navigation links at left.)

The finance monograph complements a Policy Directions Forum held in Washington, D.C. on September 9, 2002, co-sponsored by Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). The forum allowed participants to learn about and discuss the implications of the Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care projects and identify next steps toward improving access to services and quality of care for dying Americans and their families. The theme of the day was a call to Congress to implement larger, regional, population-based demonstration projects to validate the findings of these small innovative programs.

A report of the forum proceedings and a summary of that report are available here (see navigation links at left), as is a webcast of the forum (see below) provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation.