Earlier Palliative Care Referrals Associated with Reduced Length of Stay and Hospital Charges.

Inpatient palliative care consultation services have been shown to have a dramatic impact on the time cancer patients spend in the hospital, which directly affects overall health care charges and expenditures. Our study looks at early palliative care consults in patients with a variety of chronic medical conditions as well as cancer. This is a retrospective case-control study of patients referred to the palliative care department from April 2014 to June 2016.