Palliative Care Screening Implementation within the Medical Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Problem & Purpose: There are over 5 million intensive care unit (ICU) admissions each year with a mortality rate up to 29% and $108 billion dollar cost of care (SCCM, 2018). Palliative care is an essential part of comprehensive care in the ICU, however, it is underutilized in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) of a large urban academic medical center despite the unit reporting the highest mortality rate in the hospital. The purpose of the quality improvement (QI) project is to increase palliative care utilization in the MICU through the integration of nurse driven screening criteria that, when met, suggests the need for a palliative care consult. Methods: The QI project took place over a 13-week period. All patients admitted to the MICU during the implementation phase received a validated palliative care screening completed by the bedside nurse (George et al., 2015). Positive screenings were then discussed and plan of care documented by the interdisciplinary team on daily rounds. Completed screening tools were reviewed every other day to determine screening completion, documentation of family meeting notes, palliative care consults placed, and reason for not consulting palliative care despite positive screening. Results: Compliance with palliative care screening ranged from 79-100% (average 92%). Percentage of positive screenings ranged 18-50% (average 29%). Percentage of positive screenings with a consult ranged 0-60% (average 20%). The most common reason for lack of palliative consult was a planned “family meeting” (42%), however, less than 50% of these patients had a family meeting note documented. Comparing data 8 months pre-implementation to 13 weeks of implementation: average length of stay (LOS) for patients with palliative care consult decreased from 68.61 to 11.75 days; admission to consult mean decreased from 22.69 to 9.16 days; Palliative care consultation rate decreased from 13.86% to 10.39%. Conclusion: Despite utilization of a validated screening tool, palliative care consultation rates decreased. Physician preference greatly impacted consultation rates and highlighted the need to change knowledge and opinions related to palliative care. Finally, results support that screening leads to earlier palliative care consult, decreased LOS, and likely associated cost.