Although patients who have advance care plans have higher rates of hospice utilization, these plans do not reduce the likelihood that a patient would seek aggressive treatments at the end of life, a new study has found.
Health care providers and payers are giving increasing attention to advance care planning as a benefit to patients and families as as a pathway to controlling costs. Discussions of end-of-life wishes, a part of the advance care planning process, can help foster earlier hospice enrollment and reduce the stress and confusion that families face when a loved one is dying. However, a recent found that advance care planning does not guarantee lower health care utilization.
The purpose of advance care planning is to document patient wishes for end-of-life care as well as designating proxy decision makers should the patient become unable to communicate. The goal is not to move patients into hospice, but to support the patient’s own preferences, which could include hospitalization or aggressive curative treatment.
Although patients who have advance care plans have higher rates of hospice utilization, these plans do not reduce the likelihood that a patient would seek aggressive treatments at the end of life, a new study has found.
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Health care providers and payers are giving increasing attention to advance care planning as a benefit to patients and families as as a pathway to controlling costs. Discussions of end-of-life wishes, a part of the advance care planning process, can help foster earlier hospice enrollment and reduce the stress and confusion that families face when a loved one is dying. However, a recent found that advance care planning does not guarantee lower health care utilization.
The purpose of advance care planning is to document patient wishes for end-of-life care as well as designating proxy decision makers should the patient become unable to communicate. The goal is not to move patients into hospice, but to support the patient’s own preferences, which could include hospitalization or aggressive curative treatment.
Source: Hospice News