• Palliative medicine · Mar 2021

    The impact of public health palliative care interventions on health system outcomes: A systematic review.

    • Anna Collins, Julia E H Brown, Jason Mills, and Jennifer Philip.
    • Department of Medicine, St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia.
    • Palliat Med. 2021 Mar 1; 35 (3): 473-485.

    BackgroundPublic health palliative care interventions are increasingly implemented, with growing recognition of the importance of building evidence to support their utility in end-of-life care. Previous efforts have focused on community outcomes.AimTo examine the impact of public health palliative care on patterns of health service use at the end of life (primary) and explore which outcomes are being measured within this field of research (secondary).DesignSystematic review of studies reporting qualitative and quantitative data, analysed with a narrative synthesis method.Data SourcesA systematic review conducted and reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses guideline was undertaken using six electronic databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsycINFO, INFORMIT and COCHRANE) up to February 2020.ResultsSearches yielded 2622 unique titles screened for eligibility, resulting in 35 studies measuring outcomes from a public health palliative care approach. Five (14%) studies assessed health system outcomes, and three reported some mixed evidence of impact, including reduced hospital emergency admissions, hospital bed days, hospital costs and increased home deaths. Most studies (86%) instead reported on conceptual (49%), knowledge (40%), programme participation (37%) and/or individual health outcomes (29%).ConclusionThe impact of public health palliative care is an evolving area of empirical inquiry with currently only limited evidence that it improves healthcare utilisation outcomes at the end of life, and limited focus on measurement of these outcomes. Further empirical studies are needed to support the reorientation of health services, which remains an important component in realising 'whole of system change' to bring about quality end-of-life care for all.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…