Improving Quality of Palliative Care Through Implementation of National Guidelines for Palliative Care.

Background: Palliative care guidelines and quality measures have been developed in many countries to improve the quality of care. The challenge is to implement quality measures nationally to improve quality of care across all settings. Objective: This article describes the development and implementation of National Guidelines for Palliative Care (NGPC) in Singapore. Design: The NGPC was developed through literature review, multidisciplinary inputs, and modified RAND Delphi method. Quality measures for the guidelines were developed through literature review and multidisciplinary inputs and implemented with an audit of specialist palliative care providers. Results: The NGPC consisted of 13 guidelines and 64 quality measures. A total of 11 palliative care services (73.3%) participated in the audit from September 2015 to October 2015. National-level and service-level gaps in quality of care were identified and individual providers identified priority areas for improvement. Conclusion: We successfully developed the national palliative care guidelines and quality measures. We implemented voluntary self-assessment among health care institutions in various settings nationally that serve to catalyze quality improvement and cultivate a culture of quality improvement.

Clinical and Socio-Demographic Predictors of Home Hospice Patients Dying at Home: A Retrospective Analysis of Hospice Care Association's Database in Singapore.

CONTEXT: Hospice care can be delivered in different settings, but many patients choose to receive it at home because of familiar surroundings. Despite their preferences, not every home hospice patient manages to die at home. OBJECTIVE: To examine the independent factors associated with home hospice patient dying at home. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of Hospice Care Association's database. Hospice Care Association is the largest home hospice provider in Singapore. The study included all patients who were admitted into home hospice service from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2013. Cox proportional hazards modeling with time as constant was used to study the relationship between independent variables and home death. RESULTS: A total of 19,721 patients were included in the study. Females (adjusted risk ratio [ARR] 1.09, 95% CI 1.04-1.15), older patients (ARR 1.01, 95% CI 1.00-1.01), shorter duration of home hospice stay (ARR 0.88, 95% CI 0.82-0.94), fewer episodes of hospitalization (ARR 0.81, 95% CI 0.75-0.86), living with caregivers (ARR 1.54, 95% CI 1.05-2.26), doctor (ARR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01-1.08) and nurse (ARR 1.06, 95% CI 1.04-1.08) visits were positive predictors of dying-at-home. Diagnosis of cancer (ARR 0.93, 95% CI 0.86-1.00) was a negative predictor of dying-at-home. CONCLUSION: Female, older age, living with a caregiver, non-cancer diagnosis, more doctor and nurse visits, shorter duration of home hospice stays, and fewer episodes of acute hospitalizations are predictive of dying-at-home for home hospice patients.

An 11-Year Study of Home Hospice Service Trends in Singapore from 2000 to 2010.

BACKGROUND: Hospice care is most appropriate when a patient no longer benefits from curative treatment and has limited life expectancy. These patients may suffer from any type of life-limiting illness, including end-stage cancer, end-stage heart disease, end-stage renal failure, AIDS, and Alzheimer's disease, among other illnesses. Patients are managed on their pain and symptoms and home hospice care manages these patients in the comfort of their own home, enabling patients to spend their last days with dignity and have a good quality of life. OBJECTIVE: To describe the home hospice patients at HCA Hospice Care (HHC) Singapore from 2000 to 2010. Description of home care patients in terms of their sociodemographic profile and diagnosis at admission. We reviewed the Electronic Medical Records of patients admitted into HHC from 2000 to 2010. RESULTS: Patients had multiple admissions into HHC home hospice as identified in the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2010, but we only selected patient's first admission into HHC home hospice for this analysis. Of the 25,065 patients in the entire samples, 47.3% were males, 65.2% were married, and 84.3% were Chinese. 50.9% of the patients died at home, 75.5% were referred from public hospitals, 53.9% of primary caregivers were children, and the mean age of the patients was 68.0 years. Among all cancer patients admitted into HHC home hospice, lung cancer (23.6%) was the most common principal diagnosis for admission, followed by colorectal (10.5%) and liver cancers (7.7%). Among noncancer patients, renal failure (7.0%) was the most common diagnosis. Among male patients admitted into HHC home hospice, lung cancer (29.6%) was the most common diagnosis, followed by liver cancer (10.8%), colorectal cancer (10.0%), and end-stage renal failure (5.5%). For female patients, lung cancer (16.9%) was the most common diagnosis, followed by breast cancer (15.9%), colorectal cancer (11.0%), and end-stage renal failure (8.7%). Ten-year trends of the sociodemographic profile and diagnosis at admission were further analyzed to determine home hospice services utilization and the needs of the home care patients. CONCLUSION: With an increasing emphasis to encourage aging and dying in the community and more attention given to building up the home hospice industry's capacity and capability, it is important to understand the profile of the patients who have been utilizing home hospice services. This also helps to plan and develop similar services in other parts of the world.

Quality of life domains important and relevant to family caregivers of advanced cancer patients in an Asian population: a qualitative study.

PURPOSE: This study aims to identify domains of quality of life (QoL) that are culturally relevant to Chinese caregivers of advanced cancer patients in Singapore and to evaluate content adequacy of currently available instruments for use in the target population. METHODS: English- and Chinese-speaking caregivers of advanced cancer patients receiving care under a tertiary cancer center and/or a community hospice home care/day care provider were recruited for in-depth interviews. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. The identified domains, themes and sub-themes were compared to concepts addressed by items from five existing cancer-specific caregiver QoL instruments. RESULTS: Eighteen female and eight male caregivers aged 28-74 years participated in the study. Twenty-nine QoL themes and 59 sub-themes were identified in six domains, namely physical health, mental health, social health, spiritual health, financial health and daily life. Collectively, but not individually, the content of the five existing instruments adequately cover the physical health domain, social health domain and some themes on mental health domain for the study population. Content gaps were identified in the domains of mental health, spiritual health, daily life and financial health. CONCLUSIONS: The present study found culturally and contextually specific themes and sub-themes about positive emotional health, spiritual health and financial health.