Customizable Hospital Palliative Care Impact Calculator
Strong evidence exists that timely inpatient specialty palliative care services greatly improve quality of care, and in so doing, reduce length of stay and direct costs. In particular, a recent meta-analysis (May, JAMA Intern Med, 2018) demonstrated that palliative care consultations conducted within three days of admission were associated with a $3,237 reduction in direct hospital costs per patient served (2015 dollars).
This customizable Hospital Impact Calculator allows users to input their own operations—staffing and salaries, total patients seen, initial and follow-up visit mix, and local billing rates—to estimate the total financial impact of their hospital’s palliative care team. Specifically, this calculator estimates the hospital’s direct cost savings and billing revenue, net of expenses.
Palliative care champions can use this tool to advocate for resources and new initiatives, and can consider some of the embedded comparisons to national averages as they work to continuously improve operations.
For a quicker, more general estimate, please see capc.org/impact-calculator.