A post discharge palliative care pilot clinic for cancer patients.

Abstract

e24056 Background: Palliative care is an important intervention in helping alleviate symptom burden and decreasing suffering in patients facing serious illness. Additionally, early implementation of palliative care has shown to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. We aim to assess the impact of a post-discharge palliative care clinic for advanced cancer patients in decreasing symptom burden, increasing early hospice transition, improving quality of life (QOL), and decreasing 30-day hospital readmission. Methods: A post-discharge palliative care pilot clinic was created at the Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) cancer center. Data is collected, including patient symptom scores, utilizing the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS), hospice transition, emergency department (ED) visits, and 30-day hospital readmission after the outpatient intervention. Additionally, a QOL assessment survey is being utilized to evaluate patient perspective on QOL after palliative care interventions at various time points. Results: After the first palliative care clinic visit post-hospital discharge there was improvement of several symptoms, most notably found in pain symptoms, with approximately one fourth of patients (11 of 41 followed for pain symptoms) having a significant reduction of their pain scores. Eighteen of forty six patients seen in the palliative care clinic transitioned to hospice, two patients visited the ED for various symptoms or complications related to their cancer, and only six patients had hospital readmissions within 30-days due to unavoidable factors. Conclusions: Our post discharge palliative care pilot clinic appears to have been successful in aiding in early hospice readmission, decreasing hospital readmission and improving symptom burden. Correlating this with QOL findings would provide additional insight and help develop further steps to support this patient population.