when was palliative care medicine first established as an international medical subspecialty
Palliative care The first United States hospital-based palliative care consult service was developed by the Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1985 at Detroit Receiving Hospital.[35] The first palliative medicine program in the United States was started in 1987 by Declan Walsh, MD at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio.[36] This is a comprehensive integrated program, responsible for several notable innovations in US palliative medicine;[37] the first clinical and research fellowship (1991),[38] acute care palliative medicine inpatient unit (1994), and Chair in Palliative Medicine (1994). The program evolved into The Harry R. Horvitz Center for Palliative Medicine which was designated as a World Health Organization international demonstration project and accredited by the European Society for Medical Oncology as an Integrated Center of Oncology and Palliative Care.[39] Other programs followed: most notable the Palliative Care Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin (1993); Pain and Palliative Care Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1996); and The Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (1997). Since then there has been a dramatic increase in hospital-based palliative care programs, now numbering more than 1,400. Eighty percent of US hospitals with more than 300 beds have a program.[40]