Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
It is time hospice and palliative care grew up. We can no longer expect governments to treat them as a charity case, with just enough funding to avert adverse newspaper headlines. Increased financial pressure from the global economic recession and fiscal crisis on already stretched budgets means tough decisions have to be made about where to invest limited health funds. Consequently, we need to demonstrate the value of hospice and palliative care's contribution to improving health.
Five years ago, the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management special issue editorial on health economics in palliative care concluded evidence of cost-effectiveness is ‘relatively weak’ and there are ‘too few evaluations and cost-effectiveness studies of palliative care treatments and services’.1 The global provision of …