Thursday, July 15, 2010
Quality of Death Index from the Lien Foundation
(See the previous post for info on the Life Before Death site and outreach campaign)
The Lien Foundation and Singapore Hospice Council have released the first international Quality of Death Index. Even the name of the report is pretty interesting. I wonder how long they took deliberating about the name. obviously a play on Quality of Life, but POW! 'death' right there in the name, not 'end of life' or some euphemism. But that underscores one of the main goals of decreasing the taboo about dying and increasing the conversation. For the index they ranked 40 countries along the following areas:
- basic end-of-life healthcare environment
- availability of end-of-life care
- cost of end-of-life care
- quality of that care
The website for the index is even as cool as the website for Life Before Death. I am still reading through the 40 page report, but there seems to be a lot of good information about international palliative care access. They have some pretty interesting tables like the one below about 'Public Awareness of End of Life Care.'
Read the report and tell us what you think!