Purpose: To develop a HIT-based data infrastructure that serves multiple hospice and palliative
care sites, meeting clinical and administrative needs with data, technical, and analytic support.
Methods: Through a multi-site academic/community partnership, a data infrastructure was collaboratively
developed, pilot-tested at a community-based site, refıned, and demonstrated for data
collection and preliminary analysis. Additional sites, which participated in system development,
became prepared to contribute data to the growing aggregate database.
Results: Electronic data collection proved feasible in community-based hospice and palliative care.
The project highlighted “success factors” for implementing HIT in this fıeld: engagement of sitebased
project “champions” to promote the system from within; involvement of stakeholders at all
levels of the organization, to promote culture change and buy-in; attention to local needs (e.g., data
for quality reporting) and requirements (e.g., affordable cost, effıciency); consideration of practical
factors (e.g., potential to interfere with clinical flow); provision of adequate software, technical,
analytic, and statistical support; availability of flexible HIT options (e.g., different data-collection
platforms); and adoption of a consortium approach in which sites can support one another, learn
from each others’ experiences, pool data, and benefıt from economies of scale.
Conclusions: In hospice and palliative care, HIT-based data collection/management has potential
to generate better understanding of populations and outcomes, support quality assessment/quality
improvement, and prepare sites to participate in research.