Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2019
Clinicians' perceptions of opioid error-contributing factors in inpatient palliative care services: A qualitative study.
Opioid errors are a leading cause of patient harm and adversely impact palliative care inpatients' pain and symptom management. Yet, the factors contributing to opioid errors in palliative care are poorly understood. Identifying and better understanding the individual and system factors contributing to these errors is required to inform targeted strategies. ⋯ This study identified multiple system-level factors contributing to opioid errors in inpatient palliative care services. Any quality and safety initiatives targeting safe opioid delivery in specialist palliative care services needs to consider the full range of contributing factors, from individual to systems/latent factors, which promote error-causing conditions.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2019
Hospital palliative care consult improves value-based purchasing outcomes in a propensity score-matched cohort.
Hospital-based palliative care consultation is consistently associated with reduced hospitalization costs and more importantly with improved patient quality of life. As healthcare systems move toward value-based purchasing rather than fee-for-service models, understanding how palliative care consultation is associated with value-based purchasing metrics can provide evidence for expanded health system support for a greater palliative care presence. ⋯ Through value-based purchasing, hospitals have 3% of their Medicare reimbursements at risk based on readmission rates. By clarifying prognosis and patient goals, palliative care consultation reduces readmission rates. Hospital systems may want to invest in larger palliative care programs as part of their efforts to reduce hospital readmissions.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2019
Development and validation of search filters to find articles on palliative care in bibliographic databases.
Healthcare professionals and researchers in the field of palliative care often have difficulties finding relevant articles in online databases. Standardized search filters may help improve the efficiency and quality of such searches, but prior developed filters showed only moderate performance. ⋯ Our search filters can support literature searches in the field of palliative care. Our specific filter retrieves 93.7% of relevant articles, while 45% of the retrieved articles are relevant. This filter can be used to find answers to questions when time is limited. Our sensitive filter finds 99.6% of all relevant articles and may, for instance, help conducting systematic reviews. Both filters perform better than prior developed search filters in the field of palliative care.