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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Impact of community based, specialist palliative care teams on hospitalisations and emergency department visits late in life and hospital deaths
— a pooled analysis | | Author(s) | Helen Seow, Kevin Brazil, Jonathan Sussman |
| Journal title | BMJ 2014;348:g3496, 6 June 2014 |
| Pages | 10 pp |
| Source | http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3496 |
| Keywords | Terminal care ; Pain ; Medical workers ; Admission [hospitals] ; Accident & emergency depts ; Death ; Cross sectional surveys ; Canada. |
| Annotation | This pooled analysis of an Ontario, Canada retrospective cohort study found that 3109 patients treated by 11 community based specialist palliative care teams had a reduced risk of being in hospital or having an emergency department visit in the last 2 weeks of life compared to 3109 patients receiving usual care. The palliative care teams studied served different geographies and varied in team composition and size, but had the same core team members and role: a core group of palliative care physicians, nurses and family physicians who provided integrated palliative care to patients in their homes. The teams role was to manage symptoms, provide education and care, coordinate services, and be available without interruption regardless of time of day. In both care groups, about 80% had cancer and 78% received end of life homecare services for the same average duration. Across all palliative care teams (970 (31.2%) of the exposed group were in hospital and 896 (28.9%) had an emergency department visit in the last two weeks of life respectively, compared with 1219 (39.3%) and 1070 (34.5%) of the unexposed group. Despite variation in team composition and geographies, community based specialist palliative care teams were effective in reducing acute care use and hospital deaths at the end of life. (OFFPRINT) (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150504011 A |
| Classmark | LV: CT7: QT: LD:QKH: LD6: CW: 3KB: 7S * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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