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THURSDAY, Oct. 2 (HealthDay News) -- There's a new medical specialty called palliative care, and it's become widespread enough to warrant a new state-by-state report card on its availability and quality.
"Palliative medicine is focused on improving the quality of life for patients with serious illnesses," said Dr. R. Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and director of the nonprofit National Palliative Care Research Center, which issued the report card in the October issue of the Journal of Palliative Care..
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Palliative care medicine "addresses the pain and other distressing symptoms of illness," Morrison said. "It also deals with the emotional and practical needs of patients and health-care providers. And it improves communication between patients and care providers."
The discipline was recognized as a specialty in Great Britain in 1987, said Dr. Porter Storey, executive vice president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
"It is now recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialities," he said. "But there have been palliative medical specialists working in the United States for over a decade. They do a lot of work in hospice programs, as well as hospitals."
In the new state-by-state ranking, only Vermont, Montana and New Hampshire get an A, while Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi get an F. The rest of the states are somewhere in between, although Southern states did not fare well in general.
"The marks are based on a research study we did, using data from the American Hospital Association and also data that we collected," Morrison said. "We gave letter grades based on the percentage of hospitals that had palliative care programs, appropriately set up to meet the needs of seriously ill patients."
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