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Empirical evidence suggests that integrated palliative care (IPC) increases the quality of care for palliative patients and supports professional caregivers. Existing IPC initiatives in Europe vary in their design and are hardly comparable. InSuP-C, a European Union research project, aimed to build a taxonomy of IPC initiatives applicable across diseases, healthcare sectors and systems.

The taxonomy of IPC initiatives was developed in cooperation with an international and multidisciplinary focus group of 18 experts. Subsequently, a consensus meeting of 10 experts revised a preliminary taxonomy and adopted the final classification system.

Consisting of eight categories, with two to four items each, the taxonomy covers the process and structure of IPC initiatives. If two items in at least one category apply to an initiative, a minimum level of integration is assumed to have been reached …