Palliative Care in Romania.

HOSPICE Casa Sperantei has been pioneering palliative care development in Romania since 1992. The have developed specialist palliative care services in home-based settings, inpatient units, day care centers, and as hospital support teams. They have provided national and international education programs for professionals in the palliative care field, as well as promoting palliative care integration in the health care system. Legislative improvements were adopted, including funding mechanisms for the reimbursement of palliative care services through the health insurance funds, review of opioid policy, and quality standards of care. By the end of 2015, Romania had 115 specialist palliative care services (78 palliative care inpatient units, 24 home-based palliative care services, five outpatient palliative care clinics, four day care centers, and four hospital support teams). A palliative care subspecialty for doctors was recognized as early as 2000, and a multidisciplinary master's degree program has been available at Transilvania University since 2010, when the first palliative care academic position was established. Nursing education includes mandatory palliative care modules in nursing schools. For coordinated development of palliative care at the national level, a national strategy was proposed defining three levels of palliative care provision, local, district, and national. The implementation of the palliative care strategy is partially funded through a World Bank loan.

Developing a costing framework for palliative care services.

CONTEXT: Palliative care services have been reported to be a less expensive alternative to traditional treatment; however, little is known about how to measure the cost of delivering quality palliative care. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this project was to develop a standardized method for measuring the cost of palliative care delivery that could potentially be replicated in multiple settings. METHODS: The project was implemented in three stages. First, an interdisciplinary group of palliative care experts identified standards of quality palliative care delivery in the inpatient and home care services. Surveys were conducted of government agencies and palliative care providers to identify payment practices and budgets for palliative care services. In the second phase, unit costs were defined and a costing framework was designed to measure inpatient and home-based palliative care unit costs. The final phase was advocacy for inclusion of calculated costs into the national funding system. RESULTS: In this project, a reliable framework for determining the cost of inpatient and home-based palliative care services was developed. Inpatient palliative care cost in Romania was calculated at $96.58 per day. Home-based palliative care was calculated at $30.37 per visit, $723.60 per month, and $1367.71 per episode of care, which averaged 45 visits. CONCLUSION: A standardized methodology and framework for costing palliative care are presented. The framework allows a country or provider of care to substitute their own local costs to generate cost information relevant to the health-care system. In Romania, this allowed the palliative care provider community to advocate for a consistent payment system.