Key result
In 2005, only 18.36% of eligible patients dying of heart failure in the United States received hospice care, highlighting significant underutilization.
Highlights the significant underutilization of hospice care for eligible heart failure patients and discusses barriers and strategies for improvement.
Alerts clinicians to low hospice uptake in HF; leaves open effective strategies to overcome access barriers.
A relatively low percentage of eligible heart disease patients receive hospice care in the United States. In 2005, the most recent year with complete reporting, only 18.36% of patients who were dying of heart failure and were hospice eligible actually received hospice care. Reasons for this include the lack of reliable prognostic indicators, the lack of a consensus on when to stop life prolonging therapies, and the relatively high cost of life-prolonging (versus life-enhancing) pharmacotherapy such as dobutamine. In addition, most studies and case reports that address symptom management in hospice care focus on cancer patients, not those with nononcologic diagnoses. This lack of evidence may discourage practitioners who care for cardiac patients from referral to hospice programs, and may keep some hospice practitioners from aggressively targeting this population. Strategies to increase hospice program utilization by heart disease patients are discussed.
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Joni I. Berry (2010) conducted a review in Heart disease. Hospice care was evaluated on Hospice care utilization. In 2005, only 18.36% of eligible patients dying of heart failure in the United States received hospice care, highlighting significant underutilization.
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