Percent of all patients who were screened for shortness of breath (dyspnoea) during the hospice admission evaluation/palliative care initial encounter/admission visit.

Patients who are screened for the presence or absence of dyspnoea and its severity during the hospice admission evaluation / initial encounter for palliative care. Screening may be completed using verbal, numeric, visual analogue, or rating scales designed for use with non-verbal patients

Patients enrolled in hospice for 7 or more days OR patients receiving hospital-based palliative care for 1 or more days.

Denominator Exclusions: Patients with length of stay < 7 days in hospice, or < 1 day in palliative care.

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Electronic Clinical Data; Electronic Health Record. Hospice and palliative care: consecutive sample of equal numbers of admissions + discharges beginning with a randomly selected date. Data collection using a structured chart abstraction tool and operational definition.

The Level of Analysis is performed at the Clinician (Group/Practice) and Facility levels.

Indicator development: Anna P. Schenck, Franziska S. Rokoske, Danielle D. Durham, John G. Cagle, and Laura C. Hanson. The PEACE Project: Identification of Quality Measures for Hospice and Palliative Care.Journal of Palliative Medicine.Dec 2010.1451-1459.http://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2010.0238 Indicator feasbility/testing: Hanson LC, Rowe C, Wessell K, et al. Measuring palliative care quality for seriously ill hospitalized patients. J Palliat Med 2012;15(7):798-804. PEACE website: www.med.unc.edu/pcare/about-palliative-care/resources/peace-quality-measures/

Full specifications were taken from NQF documentation available here: www.med.unc.edu/pcare/wp-content/uploads/sites/503/2017/11/nqf-dyspnea-screen.pdf Unable to locate from PEACE program literature. Limited specification details available in Table 2 of Hanson LC, Rowe C, Wessell K, et al. Measuring palliative care quality for seriously ill hospitalized patients. J Palliat Med 2012;15(7):798-804. PEACE website: www.med.unc.edu/pcare/about-palliative-care/resources/peace-quality-measures/

Linked to: NQF measure #1639 and #1640 Hospice and Palliative Care - Dyspnea Screening and Dyspnea Treatment. This measure is part of a composite measure paired with Hospice and Palliative Care – Dyspnea Treatment (percentage of patients who screened positive for dyspnea who received treatment within 24 hours of screening)