Palliative care growing rapidly in U.S. hospitals

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A new survey reveals that palliative care for those with advanced disease is growing rapidly in many hospitals.
Palliative care is aimed at the relief of suffering and providing optimal quality of life for those with advanced life-threatening disease. Researchers at the Center to Advance Palliative Care have been looking at the availability of such care in the U.S. from the most recent data, from 2003.

This reveals that palliative care programs are more readily available in hospitals in the Northeast, Pacific and Mountain regions. Larger hospitals, academic medical centers, not-for-profit hospitals and Veterans Associations’ hospitals are more likely to offer palliative care than city, county, state, and for-profit hospitals. A hospital with its own hospice is more likely to offer palliative care, as you might expect, as are those with an American College of Surgeons cancer program.

The increase in palliative care can be put down to the cost reduction, compared to conventional care, which these programs represent. There also seems to be positive action on studies pointing out poor pain control. Finally, there has also been a big injection of money for the support of palliative care.

Source
Journal of Palliative Medicine 12th December 2005