Impact of Inpatient Palliative Care on Quality of End-of-Life Care and Downstream Acute and Postacute Care Utilization

Additional evidence is needed regarding the impact of inpatient palliative care (IPC) on the quality of end-of-life care and downstream utilization. Examine the effects of IPC on quality of end-of-life care and acute and postacute care use in a large integrated system. Retrospective cohort design. Adult decedents from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2014, who had at least one hospitalization at 11 Kaiser Permanente Southern California medical centers in the 12 months before death and not hospitalized for a trauma-related condition or receiving home-based PC or hospice were included in the cohort. Inverse probability of treatment weighting of propensity scores was used to compare outcomes between patients exposed to IPC (n = 3742) and controls (n = 12,755) who never received IPC before death. Patients who received IPC were more likely to enroll in home-based PC or hospice (69% vs. 43%) and were less likely to die in a hospital (15% vs. 29%) or intensive care (2% vs. 9%) compared with controls (all, p