The costs associated with caring for patients with advanced cancer and other serious health conditions can be reduced by having these patients consult with a palliative care team, a new study confirms.
In an effort to evaluate the impact of multiple comorbidities on health care spending for patients with cancer, researchers evaluated the cost-savings associated with providing palliative care consultation to adults with advanced cancer at six separate hospitals.
Findings from the study indicated that the health care costs for patients who had received palliative care consultation were on average 22% less than for those who received usual care. An even greater savings of 32% was achieved for patients with a higher number of comorbidities. Earlier consultations were found to be associated with larger cost-savings for all patients. The researchers suggested that palliative care consultations for the sickest patients may dissuade them from pursuing aggressive end-of-life treatments and shorten the amount of time patients spend in hospitals.
The study comes at a time when patients with multiple comorbidities comprise the majority of US health care spending, accounting for two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries and almost half the program’s total spending. Over the next decade, expenditures for this demographic are expected to grow even larger.
"Our latest research now shows the strong association between cost and the number of co-occurring conditions,” said R. Sean Morrison, MD, director of the National Palliative Care Research Center and professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, and lead author of the study.
“Among patients with advanced cancer and other serious illnesses, aggressive treatments are often inconsistent with patients' wishes and are associated with worse quality of life compared to other treatments. It is imperative that policymakers act to expand access to palliative care," he continued.
