Although patients who have advance care plans have higher rates of hospice utilization, these plans do not reduce the likelihood that a patient would seek aggressive treatments at the end of life, a new study has found. Health care providers and payers are giving increasing attention to advance care planning as a benefit to patients […]
More patients suffering from cardiovascular disease are dying in their homes rather than in the hospital, a new study has found. However, racial and socioeconomic disparities continue to have an impact on where patients end their lives. Between 2003 and 2017 nearly 31% of patients suffering from conditions such as heart failure, ischemic heart disease, […]
Researchers at Penn Medicine, a component of the University of Pennsylvania, have developed a predictive analytics system that increased the organization’s number of palliative care consultations by 74%. The system, called Palliative Connect, extracts clinical data from an organization’s electronic medical records and uses machine learning to analyze 30 factors of a patient’s likely prognosis […]
Care focused on extending life rather than comfort among patients with advanced chronic kidney disease correlated with lower patient and family satisfaction whether or not the patients had received dialysis, according to a recent study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Receipt of hospice or palliative care was associated with […]
Critical care nurses say they feel unprepared to provide palliative care or hospice care, according to a recent study, underscoring the need to address growing clinical staff shortages in those fields. More than 500 critical care nurses across seven intensive care units in a Virginia-based academic health center responded to a survey designed to measure […]
The availability of hospital-based palliative programs is growing nationwide, though some regions remain underserved according to new research by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC). Patients in the northeastern United States who suffer from serious illness have significantly greater access to palliative care programs that individuals in other parts of the country. Currently 72% […]
Lung cancer patients who receive palliative care interventions early in the course of their illness are more likely to survive than patients who do not, new research has found. Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Portland Health Care System and Oregon Health and Science University researchers examined data from more than 23,000 patients with advanced lung cancer who […]
Misconceptions about the nature of palliative care continue to proliferate among the U.S. population, with patient demographics among the factors that influence those beliefs, new research has found. Hospice providers nationwide are increasingly diversifying their service lines to include palliative care, but lack of awareness and poor understanding among prospective patients are a major barrier […]
Nearly 80% of consumers who received background information on palliative care said they would choose it for themselves or their loved ones, according to a recent survey by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC). However, a lack of public awareness persists. CAPC’s survey is designed to track awareness, perceptions, attitudes and interest in palliative […]
Nursing home residents with advanced dementia often receive burdensome interventions at the end-of-life rather than palliative care or hospice care, particularly among male patients, new research has found. Researchers examined the medical records of more than 27,200 nursing home residents in the late stages of dementia who died between June 1, 2010 and March 31, […]