More Palliative Care Could Save Hospitals, Medicaid Millions: Study

Dr. Sean Morrison said bringing together doctors, nurses, chaplains and social workers to talk through treatment options with patients and their families makes sense not only for the patient with end-stage pancreatic cancer but also for the one in the early stages of a relatively curable leukemia.

And now, Dr. Morrison said, data suggests not only improved outcomes for patients, but potentially thousands of dollars' worth of savings per hospital visit and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of potential savings state-wide.

His study in the journal Health Affairs compared the treatment of hundreds of patients at four hospitals across New York State. The main savings come from shortening hospital stays and keeping people out of the Intensive Care Units.

"What we found is that when patients received palliative care plus usual care, it resulted in somewhere between $4,000 and $7,500 per admission to the hospital," said Morrison, an internist, geriatrician and palliative care specialist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

He estimated that could save the New York Medicaid program up to $250 million, if applied to all hospitals with 150 beds or more. 

Morrison said about 80 percent of hospitals already have palliative care teams, but that doesn’t mean widespread savings would be easy to come by because there’s a wide variation in how effective these teams are.

He also said said there's much resistance to expanding palliative care because hospitals can’t always bill Medicaid or insurers for it, and many doctors associate it with giving up on patients.