Impact of embedded palliative care providers compared to externally available palliative care services on the number of patients receiving palliative care referrals in a large community oncology practice.

Abstract

12103 Background: Palliative care improves quality of life and may increase overall survival in patients with solid tumor malignancies. Despite having the ability to refer patients to in-home and external palliative care services, we observed low palliative care referral rates in our practice of 90 oncologists across 30 clinics. We tested whether embedding palliative care providers directly in clinic would improve palliative care referral rates for solid tumor patients. Methods: Between 2017 and 2020, we embedded an independent palliative care provider into five clinics across middle Tennessee. Access to external palliative care services was present both before and after the intervention. Using data from our EHR and billing systems, we performed a pre-post analysis measuring palliative care referrals in the six-month periods immediately before (pre-intervention period) and after (post-intervention period) a palliative care provider was embedded in each clinic. Statistical significance was assessed using Welch’s two sample t-test. Results: 8,636 unique solid tumor patients were seen in the five clinics during the study periods (Table). Despite having the ability to refer patients to external palliative care services in the pre-intervention period, the placement of a palliative care provider into clinic increased the number of solid tumor patients that received a palliative care referral per month at all clinics (min.: 200%; max.: 990%; median: 600%). Four of the five increases were statistically significant (p-values < 0.05). Conclusions: Even when external palliative care services are available, embedding palliative care providers into community oncology clinics significantly increases the rate of palliative care referrals for solid tumor patients. [Table: see text]