• Eur J Cancer Care (Engl) · May 2020

    Observational Study

    The association between palliative care team consultation and hospital costs for patients with advanced cancer: An observational study in 12 Dutch hospitals.

    • Arianne Brinkman-Stoppelenburg, Suzanne Polinder, Branko F Olij, Barbara van den Berg, Nicolette Gunnink, Mathijs P Hendriks, Yvette M van der Linden, Daan Nieboer, Annemieke van der Padt-Pruijsten, Liesbeth A Peters, Brenda Roggeveen, Frederiek Terheggen, Sylvia Verhage, Maurice J van der Vorst, Ingrid Willemen, Yvonne Vergouwe, and Agnes van der Heide.
    • Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
    • Eur J Cancer Care (Engl). 2020 May 1; 29 (3): e13198.

    BackgroundEarly palliative care team consultation has been shown to reduce costs of hospital care. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between palliative care team (PCT) consultation and the content and costs of hospital care in patients with advanced cancer.Material And MethodsA prospective, observational study was conducted in 12 Dutch hospitals. Patients with advanced cancer and an estimated life expectancy of less than 1 year were included. We compared hospital care during 3 months of follow-up for patients with and without PCT involvement. Propensity score matching was used to estimate the effect of PCTs on costs of hospital care. Additionally, gamma regression models were estimated to assess predictors of hospital costs.ResultsWe included 535 patients of whom 126 received PCT consultation. Patients with PCT had a worse life expectancy (life expectancy <3 months: 62% vs. 31%, p < .01) and performance status (p < .01, e.g., WHO status higher than 2:54% vs. 28%) and more often had no more options for anti-tumour therapy (57% vs. 30%, p < .01). Hospital length of stay, use of most diagnostic procedures, medication and other therapeutic interventions were similar. The total mean hospital costs were €8,393 for patients with and €8,631 for patients without PCT consultation. Analyses using propensity scores to control for observed confounding showed no significant difference in hospital costs.ConclusionsPCT consultation for patients with cancer in Dutch hospitals often occurs late in the patients' disease trajectories, which might explain why we found no effect of PCT consultation on costs of hospital care. Earlier consultation could be beneficial to patients and reduce costs of care.© 2019 The Authors. European Journal of Cancer Care published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…