Forty-eight percent of the patients that died during study
enrollment (19/40) received palliative care consultations and/or
end-of-life (hospice) services. This included 4 patients that received
palliative care consultations alone, 6 that received hospice alone
and 9 that received both palliative care and hospice services. Eight
of the 19 (42%) patients that received services died in the hospital.
However, three of these patients received referrals to end-of-life
services only hours before death despite lengthy terminal hospitalizations
and multiple admissions prior to their terminal admission.
A 2 2 chi-square test indicated a significant relationship
between perceiving illness severity and service utilization with
those patients whose caregivers’ perceived illness severity being
more likely to have received palliative care or end-of-life services
c2
(1, N ¼ 40) ¼ 4.8287, p ¼ 0.028. The relationship between
acknowledgement of disease terminality and service utilization did
not reach statistical significance.