Qingling Du

Variability in Access to Hospital Palliative Care in the United States

BACKGROUND Hospital palliative care programs provide high-quality, comprehensive care for seriously ill patients and their families. OBJECTIVE To examine geographic variation in patient and medical trainee access to hospital palliative care and to examine predictors of these programs. METHODS Primary and secondary analyses of national survey and census data. Hospital data including hospital palliative care programs were obtained from the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey Databasetrade mark for fiscal year 2006 supplemented by mailed surveys. Medical school-affiliated hospitals were obtained from the American Association of Medical Colleges, Web-site review, and telephone survey. Health care utilization data were obtained from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care 2008. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify characteristics significantly associated with the presence of hospital palliative care. RESULTS A total of 52.8% of hospitals with 50 or more total facility beds reported hospital palliative care with considerable variation by state; 40.9% (144/352) of public hospitals, 20.3% (84/413) of for-profit hospitals, and 28.8% (160/554) of Medicare sole community providers reported hospital palliative care. A total of 84.5% of medical schools were associated with at least one hospital palliative care program. Factors significantly associated (p < 0.05) with hospital palliative care included geographic location, owning a hospice program, having an American College of Surgery approved cancer program, percent of persons in the county with a university education, and medical school affiliation. For-profit and public hospitals were significantly less likely to have hospital palliative care when compared with nonprofit institutions. States with higher hospital palliative care penetration rates were observed to have fewer Medicare hospital deaths, fewer intensive care unit/cardiac care unit (ICU/CCU) days and admissions during the last 6 months of life, fewer ICU/CCU admission during terminal hospitalizations, and lower overall Medicare spending/enrollee. DISCUSSION This study represents the most recent estimate to date of the prevalence of hospital palliative care in the United States. There is wide geographic variation in access to palliative care services although factors predicting hospital palliative care have not changed since 2005. Overall, medical students have high rates of access to hospital palliative care although complete penetration into academic settings has not occurred. The association between hospital palliative care penetration and lower Medicare costs is intriguing and deserving of further study.

Hospice Enrollment Saves Money For Medicare And Improves Care Quality Across A Number Of Different Lengths-Of-Stay

Despite its demonstrated potential to both improve quality of care and lower costs, the Medicare hospice benefit has been seen as producing savings only for patients enrolled 53-105 days before death. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, 2002-08, and individual Medicare claims, and overcoming limitations of previous work, we found

Determinants of Medical Expenditures in the Last 6 Months of Life

2,561 in savings to Medicare for each patient enrolled in hospice 53-105 days before death, compared to a matched, nonhospice control. Even higher savings were seen, however, with more common, shorter enrollment periods:

Deciding in the dark: advance directives and continuation of treatment in chronic critical illness.

2,650,

Impact of Hospice Disenrollment on Health Care Use and Medicare Expenditures for Patients With Cancer

5,040, and

Hospice Characteristics and the Disenrollment of Patients with Cancer

6,430 per patient enrolled 1-7, 8-14, and 15-30 days prior to death, respectively. Within all periods examined, hospice patients also had significantly lower rates of hospital service use and in-hospital death than matched controls. Instead of attempting to limit Medicare hospice participation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should focus on ensuring the timely enrollment of qualified patients who desire the benefit.

Geographic Access to Hospice in the United States

BACKGROUND End-of-life medical expenditures exceed costs of care during other years, vary across regions, and are likely to be unsustainable. Identifying determinants of expenditure variation may reveal opportunities for reducing costs. OBJECTIVE To identify patient-level determinants of Medicare expenditures at the end of life and to determine the contributions of these factors to expenditure variation while accounting for regional characteristics. It was hypothesized that race or ethnicity, social support, and functional status are independently associated with treatment intensity and controlling for regional characteristics, and that individual characteristics account for a substantial proportion of expenditure variation. DESIGN Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, Medicare claims, and The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, relationships were modeled between expenditures and patient and regional characteristics. SETTING United States, 2000 to 2006. PARTICIPANTS 2394 Health and Retirement Study decedents aged 65.5 years or older. MEASUREMENTS Medicare expenditures in the last 6 months of life were estimated in a series of 2-level multivariable regression models that included patient, regional, and patient and regional characteristics. RESULTS Decline in function (rate ratio [RR], 1.64 [95% CI, 1.46 to 1.83]); Hispanic ethnicity (RR, 1.50 [CI, 1.22 to 1.85]); black race (RR, 1.43 [CI, 1.25 to 1.64]); and certain chronic diseases, including diabetes (RR, 1.16 [CI, 1.06 to 1.27]), were associated with higher expenditures. Nearby family (RR, 0.90 [CI, 0.82 to 0.98]) and dementia (RR, 0.78 CI, 0.71 to 0.87]) were associated with lower expenditures, and advance care planning had no association. Regional characteristics, including end-of-life practice patterns (RR, 1.09 [CI, 1.06 to 1.14]) and hospital beds per capita (RR, 1.01 [CI, 1.00 to 1.02]), were associated with higher expenditures. Patient characteristics explained 10% of overall variance and retained statistically significant relationships with expenditures after regional characteristics were controlled for. LIMITATION The study limitations include the decedent sample, proxy informants, and a large proportion of unexplained variation. CONCLUSION Patient characteristics, such as functional decline, race or ethnicity, chronic disease, and nearby family, are important determinants of expenditures at the end of life, independent of regional characteristics. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE The Brookdale Foundation.

Factors Influencing the Use of Intensive Procedures at the End of Life

Objective:Chronic critical illness is a devastating syndrome for which treatment offers limited clinical benefit but imposes heavy burdens on patients, families, clinicians, and the health care system. We studied the availability of advance directives and appropriate surrogates to guide decisions about life-sustaining treatment for the chronically critically ill and the extent and timing of treatment limitation. Design:Prospective cohort study. Setting:Respiratory Care Unit (RCU) in a large, tertiary, urban, university-affiliated, hospital. Patients:Two hundred three chronically critically ill adults transferred to RCU after tracheotomy for failure to wean from mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:We interviewed RCU caregivers and reviewed patient records to identify proxy appointments, living wills, or oral statements of treatment preferences, resuscitation directives, and withholding/withdrawal of mechanical ventilation, nutrition, hydration, renal replacement and vasopressors. Forty-three of 203 patients (21.2%) appointed a proxy and 33 (16.2%) expressed preferences in advance directives. Do not resuscitate directives were given for 71 patients (35.0%). Treatment was limited for 39 patients (19.2%). Variables significantly associated with treatment limitation were proxy appointment prior to study entry (time of tracheotomy/RCU transfer) (odds ratio = 6.7, 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.3–20.0, p = 0.0006) and palliative care consultation in the RCU (OR = 40.9, 95% CI, 13.1–127.4, p < 0.0001). Median (interquartile range) time to first treatment limitation was 39 (31.0–45.0) days after hospital admission and 13 (8.0–29.0) days after RCU admission. For patients dying after treatment limitation, median time from first limitation to death ranged from 3 days for mechanical ventilation and hydration to 7 days for renal replacement. Conclusions:Most chronically critically ill patients fail to designate a surrogate decision-maker or express preferences regarding life-sustaining treatments. Despite burdensome symptoms and poor outcomes, limitation of such treatments was rare and occurred late, when patients were near death. Opportunities exist to improve communication and decision-making in chronic critical illness.

Comparison of the Mental Health of Female Adult Film Performers and Other Young Women in California

PURPOSE Patients with cancer represent the largest diagnostic group of hospice users, with 560,000 referred for hospice in 2008. Oncologists rely on hospice teams to provide care for patients who have completed disease-directed treatment and desire to remain at home. However, 11% to 15% of hospice users disenroll from hospice, and little is known about their health care use and Medicare expenditures. PATIENTS AND METHODS We used Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare data for hospice users who died as a result of cancer between 1998 and 2002 (N = 90,826) to compare rates of hospitalization, emergency department, and intensive care unit admission and hospital death for hospice disenrollees and those who remained with hospice until death. We also compared per-day and total Medicare expenditures across the two groups. RESULTS Patients with cancer who disenrolled from hospice were more likely to be hospitalized (39.8% v 1.6%; P < .001), more likely to be admitted to the emergency department (33.9% v 3.1%; P < .001) or intensive care unit (5.7% v 0.1%; P < .001), and more likely to die in the hospital (9.6% v 0.2%; P < .001). Patients who disenrolled from hospice died a median of 24 days following disenrollment, suggesting that the reason for hospice disenrollment was not improved health. In multivariable analyses, hospice disenrollees incurred higher per-day Medicare expenditures than patients who remained with hospice until death (higher per-day expenditures of

Evaluating the role of palliative care consultations in patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancers.

124; P < .001). CONCLUSION Hospice disenrollment is a marker for higher health care use and expenditures for care. Strategies to manage a patients care and support family caregivers following hospice disenrollment may be beneficial and should be explored.