These performance profiles have been measuring and tracking the performance of communities, hospitals, and states, using key indicators of palliative care, since the early 2000s. By identifying exemplary performers, our reports have inspired individual and institutional providers, collaboratives, as well as entire communities, to aim higher, thus strengthening the power of timely palliative care interventions to improve late-life care in the United States. Our analysts have recently produced another report which tracks outcomes over time for a set of key indicators.
Several highlights of the report:
-fewer Americans are dying in the hospital. In 2007, 31.7% of US deaths occurred in a hospital. The high-performance
benchmark , that is, 10% of communities across the nation achieved this performance level, was 22.5% for that year. In 2017, 20.1% of deaths occurred in a hospital. So, over the span of a decade, the nation's performance moved from average to high-performing. How much more potential for improvement is there? The cities of Sarasota, Fla. and Asheville, N.C., which were high-performers in 2007, are now at 14.2 and 14.1% respectively.
-Americans spend less time in a hospital during last six months of life. An American who died in 2007 spent almost 13 days in a hospital during the last six months of life. In exemplar communities, that figure of days in hospital was almost 30% less (9 days). Ten years later (2017), the national figure had dropped to 8.1. Once again, a significant improvement.
-fewer Americans in 2017 were admitted to intensive care (14.7%) during their last six months of life than 10 years earlier (19.2%). Again, impressive improvement.
Undoubtedly, many factors contribute to these improvements. Surely, one factor has to be the greater accessibility to timely, high-quality palliative care.
I'm interested in your thoughts.
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