October 25, 2022
A cardiovascular specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto teamed with a palliative care physician to develop a collaborative at-home palliative care approach in which heart-failure patients receive care from a team that includes cardiologists, palliative-care physicians, nurses and home-care providers. The approach is being used in other parts of the country and its benefits are backed up by two studies:
- Heart failure patients treated with this collaborative approach had fewer visits to the ER and shorter hospital stays and were less likely to die in hospital; and
- The approach was able to support patients’ treatment preferences as they changed over time. They could still benefit from the collaborative palliative care, even if they initially wanted to go to hospital for life-extending treatment.