Compassion & Choices, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving care and patients' choices at the end of life, today released its Seven Principles for Patient-Centered End-of-Life Care and urged that they guide health care reform. "As individuals face the end of life, and try to navigate the health care system, their own values and choices should be paramount. Our seven principles - focus, self-determination, autonomy, personal beliefs, informed consent, balance, and notice - are designed to guide health care providers and policy-makers to place patients' values at the center of end-of-life care,"' said Compassion & Choices President Barbara Coombs Lee. "End of life care should focus on the patient's life and current experience. Too often death is seen as a failure of treatment, not a natural event. During this time, having choices can relieve hopelessness. Our Seven Principles can help guide lawmakers and policy experts to remember what's important, and make sure our health care system and its providers are putting the patient first…