Emergency Medicine Palliative Care Access (EMPallA), United States, 2018-2022

According to the World Health Organization, palliative care is "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psycho-social and spiritual." The goal of the study was to generate comparative effectiveness research evidence to support the delivery of coordinated, community-based palliative care that effectively implements care plans consistent with the goals and preferences of older adults with advanced illness and their caregivers.
This study included a pragmatic, two-arm, multi-site randomized controlled trial of older adults (50+ years) with either poor prognosis cancer or end-stage organ failure who were recruited during an emergency department (ED) visit, along with their informal caregivers, to compare nurse-led telephonic case management to facilitated, outpatient specialty palliative care on: 1) quality of life in patients, 2) loneliness, 3) healthcare use in the 12 months following enrollment, 4) symptom burden, 5) caregiver strain, 6) caregiver quality of life, and 7) bereavement.