Dale Lupu

Dale Lupu is a national leader in hospice and palliative care. She has more than 35 years experience successfully creating innovative organizations, systems, policies, educational programs and research to improve patients’ access to the care that supports their goals at the end of life. Dr. Lupu has consulted with scores of hospices across the country on a variety of strategic and operational issues, and she has a deep understanding of the dynamics at play in local markets that can inhibit or promote quality hospice care and access.

Her current research includes testing advance care planning for patients with chronic kidney disease, projecting national workforce needs for hospice and palliative care, and understanding the impact of changes in hospice finance and regulation on quality of care and access. She was part of the team that conceived and led the national consensus project, “Measuring What Matters” conducted by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association to select a set of recommended quality measures suitable for hospice and palliative care programs. She served as a member of the CMS Hospice Payment System Technical Advisory Panel. She has been consulting with the Coalition for Supportive Care of Kidney Patients since 2013 to accelerate adoption of palliative and supportive care principles in kidney care.

She holds a faculty appointment in the GW School of Nursing and adjunct appointments at GW's Milken School of Public Health and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. In 2011, she developed and taught the first public health school courses on hospice and palliative care for the Schools of Public Health at Johns Hopkins and George Washington Universities. Formerly CEO of the American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, she helped guide formation of the physician subspecialty of hospice and palliative medicine and obtain its official recognition as a subspecialty from ABMS and ACGME. Active in the hospice field since 1978, she had early exposure to the policy environment as the lead policy analyst for hospice at ASPE in the Department of Health and Human Services during the early 1980s when the Medicare hospice benefit was being formulated.