You won't know if you're improving unless you measure: Recommendations for evaluating hospice-veteran partnerships

Growing evidence indicates that there are abundant opportunities to improve the care that patients receive near the end of life. Hospice care has been associated with improvements in these and other outcomes, but hospice is underused by most patient Populations. Therefore, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has made hospice access a priority in its plan to improve end-of-life care for all veterans. In addition to committing funding for hospice care, the VA has also established a national network of Hospice-Veteran Partnerships (HVPs) whose goal is to improve access to hospice for veterans. This article describes the results Of a nationwide consensus project to develop measures of the success of HVPs and recommends key measures that should be used to track improvements and to identify opportunities for highly successful collaborative strategies.