Commentary: Is there a model for demonstrating a beneficial financial impact of initiating a palliative care program by an existing hospice program?

Abstract

The value of integrating palliative with curative modes of care earlier in the course of disease for people with life threatening illnesses is well recognized. Whereas the now outdated model of waiting for people to be actively dying before initiating palliative care has been clearly discredited on clinical grounds, how a better integration of modes of care can be achieved, financed and sustained is an ongoing challenge for the health care system in general as well as for specific institutions. When the initiative comes from a hospital or academic medical center, which may, for example, begin a palliative care consultation service, financial benefits have been well documented. These palliative care services survive mainly by tracking cost savings that can be realized in a number of ways around a medical center. We tried to pilot 3 simple models of potential cost savings afforded to hospice by initiating a palliative care program. We found that simple models cannot capture this benefit (if it in fact exists). By adding palliative care, hospice, while no doubt improving and streamlining care, is also taking on more complex patients (higher drug costs, shorter length of stay, more outpatient, emergency room and physician visits). Indeed, the hospice was absorbing the losses associated with having the palliative care program. We suggest that an avenue for future exploration is whether partnering between hospitals and hospice programs can defray some of the costs incurred by the palliative care program (that might otherwise be passed on to hospice) in anticipation of cost savings. We end with a series of questions: Are there financial benefits? Can they be modeled and quantified? Is this a dilemma for hospice programs wanting to improve the quality of care but who are not able on their own to finance it?