TY - JOUR
T1 - Timely Palliative Care
T2 - Personalizing the Process of Referral
AU - Hui, David
AU - Heung, Yvonne
AU - Bruera, Eduardo
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: D.H. was supported in part by grants from the National Cancer Institute (R01CA214960; R01CA225701; R01CA231471).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2022/2/1
Y1 - 2022/2/1
N2 - Timely palliative care is a systematic process to identify patients with high supportive care needs and to refer these individuals to specialist palliative care in a timely manner based on standardized referral criteria. It requires four components: (1) routine screening of supportive care needs at oncology clinics, (2) establishment of institution-specific consensual criteria for referral, (3) a system in place to trigger a referral when patients meet criteria, and (4) availability of outpatient palliative care resources to deliver personalized, timely patient-centered care aimed at improving patient and caregiver outcomes. In this review, we discuss the conceptual underpinnings, rationale, barriers and facilitators for timely palliative care referral. Timely palliative care provides a more rational use of the scarce palliative care resource and maximizes the impact on patients who are offered the intervention. Several sets of referral criteria have been proposed to date for outpatient palliative care referral. Studies examining the use of these referral criteria consistently found that timely palliative care can lead to a greater number of referrals and earlier palliative care access than routine referral. Implementation of timely palliative care at each institution requires oncology leadership support, adequate palliative care infrastructure, integration of electronic health record and customization of referral criteria.
AB - Timely palliative care is a systematic process to identify patients with high supportive care needs and to refer these individuals to specialist palliative care in a timely manner based on standardized referral criteria. It requires four components: (1) routine screening of supportive care needs at oncology clinics, (2) establishment of institution-specific consensual criteria for referral, (3) a system in place to trigger a referral when patients meet criteria, and (4) availability of outpatient palliative care resources to deliver personalized, timely patient-centered care aimed at improving patient and caregiver outcomes. In this review, we discuss the conceptual underpinnings, rationale, barriers and facilitators for timely palliative care referral. Timely palliative care provides a more rational use of the scarce palliative care resource and maximizes the impact on patients who are offered the intervention. Several sets of referral criteria have been proposed to date for outpatient palliative care referral. Studies examining the use of these referral criteria consistently found that timely palliative care can lead to a greater number of referrals and earlier palliative care access than routine referral. Implementation of timely palliative care at each institution requires oncology leadership support, adequate palliative care infrastructure, integration of electronic health record and customization of referral criteria.
KW - Access and evaluation
KW - Delivery of health care
KW - Health care quality
KW - Hospital
KW - Implementation
KW - Outpatient clinics
KW - Palliative care
KW - Patient-centered care
KW - Psychological distress
KW - Randomized controlled trial
KW - Referral and consultation
KW - Supportive care
KW - Symptom assessment
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U2 - 10.3390/cancers14041047
DO - 10.3390/cancers14041047
M3 - Review article
C2 - 35205793
AN - SCOPUS:85124987519
SN - 2072-6694
VL - 14
JO - Cancers
JF - Cancers
IS - 4
M1 - 1047
ER -