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Abstract

Background:

Multiple studies demonstrate substantial utilization of acute hospital care and, potentially excessive, intensive medical and surgical treatments at the end-of-life.

Aim:

To evaluate the relationship between the use of home and facility-based hospice palliative care for patients dying with cancer and service utilization at the end of life.

Design:

Retrospective, population-level study using administrative databases. The effect of palliative care was analyzed between coarsened exact matched cohorts and evaluated through a conditional logistic regression model.

Setting/participants:

The study was conducted on the cohort of 34,357 patients, resident in Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy, admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of metastatic or poor-prognosis cancer during the 6 months before death between January 2013 and December 2015.

Results:

Patients who received palliative care experienced significantly lower rates of all indicators of aggressive care such as hospital admission (odds ratio (OR) = 0.05, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.04–0.06), emergency department visits (OR = 0.23, 95% CI: 0.21–0.25), intensive care unit stays (OR = 0.29, 95% CI: 0.26–0.32), major operating room procedures (OR = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.21–0.24), and lower in-hospital death (OR = 0.11, 95% CI: 0.10–0.11). This cohort had significantly higher rates of opiate prescriptions (OR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.21–1.33) (p < 0.01 for all comparisons).

Conclusion:

Use of palliative care at the end of life for cancer patients is associated with a reduction of the use of high-cost, intensive services. Future research is necessary to evaluate the impact of increasing use of palliative care services on other health outcomes. Administrative databases linked at the patient level are a useful data source for assessment of care at the end of life.

Keywords

Palliative care health resources advanced cancer retrospective studies quality of health care terminal care Italy humans

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Effectiveness of palliative care services: A population-based study of end-of-life care for cancer patients

Abstract

Background:

Aim:

Design:

Setting/participants:

Results:

Conclusion:

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material