Impact of home-based palliative care on health care costs and hospital use: A systematic review.

Gonzalez-Jaramillo, Valentina; Fuhrer, Valérie; Gonzalez-Jaramillo, Nathalia; Kopp-Heim, Doris; Eychmüller, Steffen; Maessen, Maud (2021). Impact of home-based palliative care on health care costs and hospital use: A systematic review. Palliative & Supportive Care, 19(4), pp. 474-487. Cambridge University Press 10.1017/S1478951520001315

	Text Gonzalez-Jaramillo_PalliatSupportCare_2020_epub.pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (488kB) | Request a copy
Preview	Text Gonzalez-Jaramillo_PalliatSupportCare_2020_AAM.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND). Download (307kB) | Preview
Preview	Text Gonzalez-Jaramillo_PalliatSupportCare_2020_supplmat.pdf - Supplemental Material Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND). Download (228kB) | Preview

OBJECTIVE

To assess the effectiveness of home-based palliative care (HBPC) on reducing hospital visits and whether HBPC lowered health care cost.

METHOD

We searched six bibliographic databases (Embase (Ovid); Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials; Medline (Ovid); PubMed; Web of Science Core Collection; and, CINAHL) until February 2019 and performed a narrative synthesis of our findings.

RESULTS

Of the 1,426 identified references, 21 articles based on 19 unique studies met our inclusion criteria, which involved 92,000 participants. In both oncological and non-oncological patients, HBPC consistently reduced the number of hospital visits and their length, as well as hospitalization costs and overall health care costs. Even though home-treated patients consumed more outpatient resources, a higher saving in the hospital costs counterbalanced this. The reduction in overall health care costs was most noticeable for study periods closer to death, with greater reductions in the last 2 months, last month, and last two weeks of life.

SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS

Stakeholders should recognize HBPC as an intervention that decreases patient care costs at end of life and therefore health care providers should assess the preferences of patients nearing the end-of-life to identify those who will benefit most from HBPC.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

87 since deposited on 17 Dec 2020
68 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item