title: Palliative care options can ease strain on EDs, improve care for patients with poor prognoses or difficult symptoms.
abstract: A new study suggests that for too many older patients, a trip to the ED leads to a hospital admission, where many of these patients spend their final hours. Instead, experts argue that many of these patients could be better served by palliative care options. Experts note that palliative care consultation teams and staff education on how to have "goals-of-care"discussions can help EDs deliver more responsive care to these patients while also reducing use of the ICU and other costly procedures. Investigators found that roughly half of 4,500 older patients who died while participating in the Health and Retirement study, made at least one ED visit in the last month of their life, and that three-quarters of these visits resulted in hospital admissions. More than two-thirds of the patients who were admitted to the hospital died there. Study participants who enrolled in hospice at least one month prior to their death were much less likely to visit the ED or to die in the hospital.
mesh_terms: D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000379:methods*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014481:United States