A well-established palliative care program identified patients who received palliative care and compared costs and service utilization pre- and post-palliative care involvement. Analysis of these factors indicates significant cost savings, as well as reduced utilization of hospital days and ER visits.

Short Description:

• The Pain and Palliative Care program at CHCMN identified patients served who had one year experience prior to Pediatric Palliative Care referral and one year experience with PPC program utilization.
• Service utilization and costs of care for one year before and one year after PPC involvement were compared, using chart audit and billing data.
• Results indicated that after initiation of PPC services, ED visits, number of hospital admissions, and number of days in hospital were significantly reduced.

Summary of Results:

This quality improvement study looked at a group of patients who were served by a single health care system so that costs and utilization patterns could be examined, comparing “apples to apples.” Patients who had protocol driven planned admissions (e.g.: oncology patients) were excluded. Patients who had less than one year experience prior to PPC or after PPC were also excluded. The findings were drawn from the hospital system’s data warehouse, and so reflect data available in the health care organization on regular basis. This information was used to explain potential benefits of PPC services to the patients served, as well as to the organization itself. The data reflects how PPC helps to support the hospital’s mission and goals effectively for maximizing resources in and environment of high demand for ED and ICU services.