About The Study: A stepped-care model, with palliative care visits occurring only at key points in patients’ cancer trajectories and using a decrement in quality of life to trigger more intensive palliative care exposure, resulted in fewer palliative care visits without diminishing the benefits for patients’ quality of life. While stepped palliative care was associated with fewer days in hospice, it is a more scalable way to deliver early palliative care to enhance patient-reported outcomes.
Quote from corresponding author Jennifer S. Temel, M.D.:
“This study demonstrates that early palliative care can be effectively tailored to a patient’s cancer and care needs to maximize their quality of life while utilizing fewer palliative care resources. Implementing this patient-centered approach to delivering early palliative care will allow more patients to access essential early palliative care services.
“These findings are especially salient as patients with advanced cancer are now living longer while being treated with life-long cancer therapies, so a tailored palliative care model enables greater dissemination of palliative care services while ensuring patients receive the care they need when they need it.
“This research continues to grow the evidence base that early palliative care is a necessary and integral component of cancer care for patients diagnosed with advanced cancer and provides data on how to increase the number of patients who can access this essential service.”