aginghearts Emergency Medicine, palliative care, Patient Priorities Care, Research, Shared Decision Making

Palliative Care in the Emergency Department

Ask any older adult about their preferences foUNC Headshotr end-of-life care, and the majority of them will tell you that they would prefer to die at home rather than in a hospital. Unfortunately, this desire is often not fulfilled.

The population in the United States is aging; by 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be over age 65. This shift in demographics has already had a significant impact on healthcare utilization, particularly in regard to emergency medical services. Not only do older adults visit the emergency department (ED) at higher rates than younger patients, but they are also more likely to be admitted and experience longer stays.

These trends are especially prominent near the end of life, with half of older adults visiting the ED within the last month of life. For those older patients who are discharged home from the ED, repeat visits are common. This often results in a vicious cycle in which older patients are repeatedly discharged home from the ED, only to return within a few months, often for the same diagnosis that brought them to the ED in the first place. Notably, there are few safeguards in place to reduce recurrent ED visits.

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 came the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, which allowed Medicare to reduce payments to hospitals with excessive readmission rates. As a result, hospitals created programs to reduce readmissions, such as arranging for outpatient follow-up before discharge. However, such initiatives are only available to patients who are admitted to inpatient services and do not exist for patients who are discharged home from the ED. Thus, the ED represents a pivotal point in which clinicians can intervene to improve end-of-life care and reduce recurrent ED visits among older adult patients with advanced illnesses. The question then becomes: what should those interventions be?

Utilizing the ED as a means to enroll patients in palliative care programs represents a paradigm shift that may support older adults with advanced illness and repeat ED presentations. Palliative care is a rapidly growing field that is designed to provide supplementary care to patients with serious, life-limiting illnesses by providing medical, social, and emotional support to patients and their caregivers. Importantly, palliative care does not depend on prognosis and may be delivered in conjunction with life-prolonging treatment.

Multiple studies have shown that palliative care improves quality of life among patients and their families, lessens symptom burden, reduces future ED visits, and helps patients achieve their end-of-life goals (as evidenced here and here). Further, when the American Board of Emergency Medicine officially recognized palliative medicine as a subspecialty in 2006, palliative care found a new role within the ED. As a result, there has been a surge of research regarding the benefits and feasibility of palliative care in the ED, as well as the best ways to design programs and educate providers.

Although the benefits have been well established, there are also significant barriers to implementing palliative care in the ED. Patients in the ED, particularly those in need of palliative care services, are often distressed and may not be receptive to discussions regarding end-of-life care. Additionally, some ED physicians may feel that palliative care is outside the scope of their practice. Others worry that the chaotic environment in the ED is not conducive to meaningful end-of-life care discussions, and that implementing palliative care in the ED may significantly impact wait times.

In spite of these barriers, frequent repeated ED visits are likely to become more common with the aging U.S. population, and initiating palliative care in the ED has the potential to improve care for older adults in several ways: by decreasing repeat ED visits, improving quality of life, and helping patients achieve their end-of-life goals. Future implementation science efforts may help to identify optimal strategies to deliver palliative care in the fast-moving and often disruptive ED environment.

 

By: Julia Allison Brickey
Julia Allison Brickey is a medical student at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

 

 

aginghearts heart failure, palliative care

Understanding the Peaks and Valleys: Why Do Patients with Heart Failure Leave Hospice?

David Russell Headshot Cropped.pngHospices provide palliative and supportive services to people who are nearing the end of life. More people in the U.S. are using hospice than ever before—recent data indicate that half of those with Medicare insurance who died in 2017 used hospice. Hospices are also serving a more diverse population and reaching people with a range of diseases, including heart failure. While this is encouraging news, patients with heart failure face unique challenges in hospice. Because of difficulties in making accurate prognosis estimates, many patients with heart failure are referred to hospice too early or late in the disease process. Also, heart failure causes sudden changes in physical functioning and symptoms that can be difficult to manage at home. These difficulties can make it more likely that patients with heart failure end up leaving hospice prior to death, an event that is also known as “live discharge.”

A study that we recently published in JACC: Heart Failure found that 30% of patients with heart failure experience a live discharge from hospice. We found that this occurs much more frequently in heart failure compared to other diseases like cancer and stroke. Live discharge can happen for several reasons, including unanticipated medical events that lead to hospitalization, decisions by patients and their families to pursue disease-directed treatments that are not allowed under hospice regulations (“elective revocation”), leaving the hospice’s service area, or having an extended prognosis beyond the six-month eligibility window.

Which heart failure patients are more likely to leave hospice before death–“live discharge”?

Data that we gathered from a large population of patients in New York City allowed us to explore factors that were linked with live discharge from hospice:

  • Younger patients between the ages of 18 and 74 are more likely to leave hospice because of hospitalizations or elective revocations.
  • Patients from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds, including black and Hispanic patients, are more than twice as likely to leave hospice because of hospitalization.
  • Higher functioning patients who are more mobile and less reliant on assistance, measured by scores of 50-70% on the Palliative Performance Scale, are more likely to experience live discharge.

What do hospice nurses and other team members think about the experiences of patients with heart failure?

We talked to interdisciplinary team members at a large hospice agency, including nurses and physicians, to understand more about what patients with heart failure experience when they enroll in hospice. Some of the key issues they discussed were:

  • The unique experience of patients with heart failure—rapid changes in symptoms are common and many patients have complex medication regimens and medical devices like defibrillators that require special care.
  • The limited understanding that many patients have of hospice and their disease—many patients lack a clear sense of what hospice is and its philosophy, or are less prepared and ready to face the end of life.
  • The importance of patients’ social and family context—factors such as education, religion, language, social support, and family dynamics were all cited as playing an important role in the experience of patients with heart failure in hospice.

What does this all mean?

We need to pay closer attention to the experiences of patients with heart failure in hospice—to identify ways to help patients stay comfortable at home and prevent avoidable hospitalizations. Providing cardiac-specific training to hospice teams and caregivers may be instrumental in keeping patients with heart failure continuously enrolled in hospice. Also, efforts to raise awareness about hospice goals of care may also help with reducing barriers to palliative care.

By: David Russell, PhD

Dr. Russell is a Research Scientist in the Center for Home Care Policy & Research at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Appalachian State University. 

aginghearts heart failure, palliative care

The Heart of the Matter: Palliative Care in Heart Failure

Megan Rau HeadshotApproximately 5.7 million U.S. adults have heart failure (HF), and 1 in 5 individuals over age 40 will develop HF in their lifetimes. HF is accompanied by many symptoms – including fatigue, shortness of breath, mood changes, pain, and anorexia. Among older adults with HF, these symptoms are compounded by mobility limitations, frailty, and other co-morbidities. Palliative Care is an optimal way to address symptoms while concurrently treating with disease-modifying interventions (Figure 1).

 

fig1
Figure 1. Schematic Depiction of Comprehensive Heart Failure Care. 

Palliative care is defined by the World Health Organization as “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual…Palliative care is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life.”

Palliative care can help HF patients in several ways. First, the palliative care team can work with a patient’s cardiologist in proactively treating symptoms as they develop over the course of the illness and during times of exacerbations. While the underlying cause of these symptoms is not completely understood, hypotheses suggest that physiological changes contribute to symptom burden (Figure 2).

fig2.jpg
Figure 2. Schematic Etiology of Heart Failure Symptoms.  

One of the most common symptoms with heart failure is dyspnea, and a patient’s cardiologist and palliative care clinician may work together to treat dyspnea by using diuretics to optimize fluid status, teaching breathing techniques, and (in advanced disease) administering a low dose opioid such as morphine to alleviate shortness of breath. These treatments have the unified goal of improving a patient’s quality of life.

Second, palliative care assists with effective communication between patients and clinicians in the form of advanced care planning – including establishing a health care proxy, completing advanced directives, discussing goals of care, and having end of life conversations regarding when to stop certain interventions. Advanced care planning discussions help to ensure patients’ preferences for what is most important in their care are met.

Goodlin et al provide examples of language clinicians may use to eliciting these preferences, such as “What treatment we recommend depends on your medical condition, but also on what approach to care you prefer and what is important to you at this point in your life”. This statement allows a platform for patients to express their wishes and what quality of life means to them. Their clinician is then able to recommend treatments that align with their goals and preferences.

HF is a common disease with a dynamic trajectory due to periods of exacerbation and recovery. It is imperative that cardiologists and palliative care clinicians work together to provide disease-modifying interventions while concurrently treating symptoms and developing advanced care plans with patients.

For more information on Palliative Care in Heart Failure visit the following websites:

 

By: Megan E. Rau, MD, MPH

Dr. Rau is a practicing physician at NYU Langone Health who specializes in geriatrics and palliative care & hospice.