Abstract
Introduction:
Therapeutic alliance (TA), or the extent to which patients feel a sense of caring and trust with their physician, may have an impact on health care utilization. We sought to determine if TA is associated with: (1) emergency department (ED) visits within 30 days of death and (2) hospice enrollment.
Methods and Materials:
This is a secondary analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial. We used restricted cubic splines to assess the relationship between TA scores and health care utilization.
Results:
Six hundred seventy-two patients were enrolled in the study, with 331 (49.3%) dying within 12 months. Patients with higher TA were less likely to have an ED visit in the last 30 days of life, but there was no evidence of a relationship between TA and enrollment in hospice.
Conclusions:
Higher TA was associated with decreased ED visits within 30 days of death. There was no association between TA and rates of hospice enrollment.
Clinical Registration Number: NCT02712229.
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