title: Use of Palliative Care Services in a Tertiary Cancer Center.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite increasing prevalence of palliative care (PC) services in cancer centers, most referrals to the service occur exceedingly late in the illness trajectory. Over the years, we have made several attempts to promote earlier patient access to our PC program, such as changing the name of our service from PC to supportive care (SC). This study was conducted to determine the use of PC/SC service over the past 8 years.
  
  
  METHODS
  We reviewed billing data for all PC/SC encounters. We examined five metrics for use: inpatient consultations as a percentage of hospital admissions, ratio of inpatient consultations to average number of operational beds, time from hospital registration to outpatient consultation, time from advanced cancer diagnosis to consultation, and time from first outpatient consultation to death/last follow-up.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Over the years, we found a consistent increase in patient referrals to the PC/SC program. In the inpatient setting, we found approximate doubling of the inpatient consultations as a percentage of hospital admissions and the ratio of inpatient consultations to hospital beds (from 10% to 19% and from 2.4 to 4.9, respectively; p < .001). In the outpatient setting, we observed variations in referral pattern between oncology services, but, overall, the time from consultation to death/last follow-up increased from 4.8 months to 7.9 months (p = .001), which was accompanied by a significant decrease in the interval to consultation from hospital registration and advanced cancer diagnosis (p < .001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We have observed a consistent annual increase in new patient referrals as well as earlier access for outpatient referrals to our SC service, supporting increased use of palliative care at our cancer center.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In response to accumulating evidence on the benefits of palliative care (PC) referral to oncology patients, efforts are being made to increase PC use. This study, conducted at MD Anderson Cancer Center, demonstrates consistent annual growth in PC referrals, which was accompanied by a significant increase in the outpatient referral of patients with nonadvanced cancer and earlier referral of those with advanced cancer. However, significant variations in the referral patterns between oncology services were observed. These results have implications for other cancer centers looking to enhance use of PC services by having a business model that allows for appropriate space and staff expansion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA sdalal@mdanderson.org.
authors.forename: Shalini
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dalal
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bruera
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hui
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Sriram
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yennu
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Rony
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dev
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Masoni
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Ijeoma
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ihenacho
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Obasi
authors.affiliation: Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bruera
mesh_terms: D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D010166:Palliative Care; D013727:Terminal Care; D062606:Tertiary Care Centers
keywords: Cancer; End-of-life care; Palliative care; Supportive Care