Literature Review

Hospice & Palliative Care Handbook: Quality, Compliance, and Reimbursement, 4th Edition McGraw Hill - Access APN; textbook by Tina M. Marrelli and Jennifer Kennedy; 3/28/24 “Hospice & Palliative Care Handbook, Fourth Edition, is an invaluable resource for timely hospice regulatory and compliance information, documentation, care planning, and case management. It provides clear guidance for hospice managers, clinicians, and interdisciplinary group members. I have utilized Tina Marrelli’s home health and hospice handbooks to support training new clinical staff and students for decades and consider these resources to be the gold standard.” – Kimberly Skehan, MSN, RN, HCS-D, COS-C, Vice President of Accreditation - Community Health Accreditation Partner

The burden of getting medical care can exhaust older patients Navigating Aging, by Judith Graham; 3/27/24 [Ishani Ganguli] is the author of a new study showing that Medicare patients spend about three weeks a year having medical tests, visiting doctors, undergoing treatments or medical procedures, seeking care in emergency rooms, or spending time in the hospital or rehabilitation facilities. ... [Additionally,] more than 1 in 10 seniors, including those recovering from or managing serious illnesses, spent a much larger portion of their lives getting care — at least 50 days a year. ... When [treatment burden becomes overwhelming], people stop following medical advice and report having a poorer quality of life, the researchers found.

Palliative care improves quality of life for bone marrow transplant patients Duke Health News & Media, by Alexis Porter; 3/25/24 ... Researchers tested the effectiveness of an integrated palliative care intervention across diverse settings. They enrolled 360 adults undergoing bone marrow transplants at three academic medical centers, including Duke University Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center at the University of Washington. ... Patients receiving the palliative care intervention reported better quality of life, defined by the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, and able to participate in life events. They also had lower depression, PTSD and fatigue symptoms compared to those receiving usual care. 

"A strong reason why I enjoy coming to work": Clinician acceptability of a palliative and supportive care intervention (PACT) for older adults with acute myeloid leukemia and their care partners Journal of Geriatric Oncology; by Ayomide Okanlawon Bankole, Natasha Renee Burse, Victoria Crowder, Ya-Ning Chan, Rachel Hirschey, Ahrang Jung, Kelly R Tan, Susan Coppola, Mackenzi Pergolotti, Daniel R Richardson, Ashley Leak Bryant; 3/20/24 Introduction: ... In this study, we examined clinician acceptability of a NIH-funded interdisciplinary PAlliative and Supportive Care inTervention (PACT) for older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and their care partners that transcends both inpatient and outpatient settings. Results: ... Five themes were identified in the thematic analysis: (1) Emotions and affect towards the intervention, (2) Intervention coherence and self-efficacy, (3) Barriers, burden, and opportunity costs of delivering the intervention, (4) Usefulness and effectiveness of the intervention, and (5) Recommendations to improve intervention delivery.

Patient and caregiver satisfaction of a palliative care chronic diseases clinic during COVID lockdowns Chronic Illness; by Xiang Rong Sim, Jade Hudson, Catriona Parker, Fiona Runacres, Peter Poon; 3/20/24, online ahead of print Objectives: To assess the quality assurance of a specialist palliative care clinic focused on chronic diseases and explore the satisfaction and acceptability of the telemedicine model amongst patients and caregivers.Results: ... the most common primary diagnosis was renal failure. Participants rated telemedicine as easier to access than face-to-face appointments due to convenience. Telemedicine was rated highly for future utility, with video consultations being perceived as more useful than telephone consultations. Participants responded overwhelmingly well towards the clinic.

Legendary healthcare researcher John E. Wennberg, who shaped efforts to reform the nation’s healthcare system, dies at 89Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, by Susan Green; 3/18/24John E. (Jack) Wennberg, MD, MPH, founder and director emeritus of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, the Peggy Y. Thomson Professor in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences Emeritus at the Geisel School of Medicine, and founding editor of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, died March 10, 2024. He was 89 years old. “His work pioneered a field that has grown into an entirely new academic discipline in medicine,” Duane Compton, PhD, Geisel School of Medicine dean, says. ... Wennberg focused on improving decision quality by combining better clinical evidence with informed patient preferences. The introduction of shared decision-making between clinicians and patients to preserve warranted variation due to patient preferences is now embedded in health policies across the globe.

Specialized nursing facility clinicians improve end-of-life care Cornell Chronicle, by Marijke Vroomen Durning, Weill Cornell Medicine; 3/15/24 Specialized nursing facility clinicians, or SNFists, may decrease the likelihood of nursing home residents experiencing stressful hospitalizations and improve the quality of life in their last days, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine. The paper, published March 15 in JAMA Network Open, examined how SNFists uniquely impacted the care of nursing home residents in their last 90 days, compared with those cared for by other clinicians. This large-scale study is the first of its kind. 

Palliative care cuts costs for metastatic cancer

Palliative care across the spectrum of heart failure JACC Heart Fail;  y Laura P Gelfman, Moritz Blum, Modele O Ogunniyi, Colleen K McIlvennan, Dio Kavalieratos , Larry A Allen; online ahead of print 2/27/24; print 3/8/24 Persons with heart failure (HF) often suffer from poor symptom control, decreased quality of life, and poor communication with their health care providers. ... New models are required that are better informed by high-quality data, engage a range of health care providers in primary palliative care principles, and have clear triggers for specialty palliative care engagement, with specific palliative interventions tailored to patient's illness trajectory and changing needs.

Editorial: Illness trajectories in the age of big data The BMJ; by Peter Tanuseputro, Colleen Webber, and James Downar; 3/1/24For decades, healthcare providers have understood that patients follow typical trajectories of health decline as they approach the end of life, and they have used this understanding to help patients and families anticipate the dying process. Traditional trajectories focus on function or overall health status and include sudden death, terminal illness ..., organ failure ..., and frailty ... Two Education articles in the BMJ add novel dimensions to our understanding of health decline. Murray et al explain how declines in function do not always mirror declines in social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. They also add a new trajectory, multimorbidity, to describe a person with conditions from multiple trajectories (such as heart disease from organ failure and cognitive impairment from frailty).

"The great escape": How an incident of elopement gave rise to trauma informed palliative care for a patient experiencing multiple disadvantage BMC Palliat Care, by Sam Quinn, Libby Ferguson, Derek Read, and Naomi Richards; 2/28/24Background: This case report ... illustrates how unresolved traumatic experiences across the life course can affect a patient's engagement with palliative care and offers insights into the flexibility and adaptations necessary for taking a trauma informed approach to care for an individual experiencing multiple disadvantage. 

NIA is leading efforts to coordinate NIH palliative care researchNational Institute on Aging, by Chandra Keller and Alexis Bakos; 2/28/24