Assessing Quality of Care for the Myelodysplastic Syndromes

Measuring the quality of care for patients with chronic cancers is difficult, especially for heterogeneous malignancies such as the myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Recent work suggests that improvements may be needed in the quality of diagnostic, treatment, and end-of-life care for patients with these syndromes. Moreover, rigorous assessment of factors that are necessary to deliver high-quality care such as preferred method of decision-making and pre-treatment quality of life are often overlooked. Finally, a key component of quality care is that it is received equitably across different patient populations, yet several recent studies suggest that there are financial, educational, race-ethnic, and age-related barriers to equitable MDS care.