Research agenda for developing measures to examine quality of care and quality of life of patients diagnosed with life-limiting illness.

Despite the universality of dying, research has not focused on developing conceptual models and measurement tools for examining the quality of care and quality of life of dying patients and their loved ones. We present here a vision and research agenda for the development of a Tool Kit of Instruments to Measure End of Life Care (TIME). Instruments for inclusion in the eventual "Tool Kit" should be patient-focused and family-centered, clinically meaningful, administratively manageable, and psychometrically sound. Prioritizing domains to measure quality of care should be based on consumer input and synergistic with ongoing efforts to formulate guidelines and standards of care. For this vulnerable population, research is needed regarding the timing and sources of data collection. In order to achieve maximal benefit, ultimately measurement tools must be incorporated into existing measurement systems and consideration be given to generating informative reports which leads to institutional action to improve the quality of care.