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

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.