Italian Palliative Care Services: The Role of Patients' and Professionals' Views in Health Technology Assessment Scope Development

Background: Palliative care services are growing, but vary across Europe. Palliative care is being used as a case study to test the methodology developed within the INTEGRATE-HTA project. The project aims to develop methods to enable an integrated assessment of complex technologies such as palliative care. The engagement of stakeholders in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is widely recommended as it ensures that a large number of perspectives have a voice and due consideration. Aims: To identify stakeholder views of the key issues impacting on palliative care to facilitate the HTA project scope development. The present work focuses on the findings from participants in Italy. Design: “Patient” (n=7) and professional (n=8) stakeholders were enrolled as participants in qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews, lasting approximately 45 minutes, were either conducted face-to-face or over the telephone. An adapted version of the EUnetHTA core model, which guides HTA development, supported the interviews. Responses were audio recorded and transcribed into a synopsis presentation. Thematic analysis identified key issues. Results: Respondents identified similar issues including: access to palliative care services above all for non-cancer populations; availability of palliative care throughout the country; availability of home palliative care services; communication with patients and family members; improvement of quality of life in patients; staff education; training; implementation of legislation regulating palliative care. Conclusions: Interviewing persons with experience of palliative care allowed us to identify important topics and to assist the INTEGRATE-HTA project scope development. This engagement will ensure that perspectives of patients, families, carers, professionals will have due consideration within the HTA process. [The projects is co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (Grant Agreement No. 306141)]