Research in the journal Palliative Medicine surveys the research on whether palliative care is less expensive than usual care, and whether it is cost-effective.
A great deal of health care expense is associated patients who are incapable of making decisions about their care. A New England Journal of Medicine perspective discusses how to handle these patients.
An article in the Journal of Palliative Care finds that palliative care can reduce ER visits and overall spending and improve the quality of end-of-life care, but faces many obstacles, including a balkanized system and lack of trained palliative care professionals.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jpm.2013.9464Most people want to die at home, but few do. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association examines changes in place of death and use of hospice care over the last decade for Medicare beneficiaries.
A substantial amount of Medicare and overall health spending is incurred in the last few months of patients’ lives. Much of this spending is due to intensive care that obviously is rather superfluous at that point. A new article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reports on research regarding end-of-life discussions and resulting care.
Thank God the election is finally over, but our Potpourri is never-ending, this week bringing you the latest on why comparative effectiveness research results don’t translate to practice, innovations to reduce health spending, the value of medication adherence, factors related to end-of-life quality and MedPAC on new quality measures for avoidable hospital and ER use.
Another installment of our non-award winning (are there any potential awards?) Potpourri, this one examining drug costs for conditions of aging, self-referral in imaging, in home palliative care at the end-of-life, more on hospital readmissions and retail clinic utilization.
Another sunny Potpourri, brightening your day with rays of data on hospital at home; Medicare care coordination programs; an employer survey on impacts of the reform law; a survey on health habits and employee productivity; first quarter health plan results and ER use and end-of-life care.
End-of-life care accounts for a large fraction of health spending. Often decisions regarding such care are made by surrogates and new research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggest that analytical biases lead these surrogates to misinterpret information provided by physicians.