"Racial and Ethnic Disparities Exist in Palliative Care Use Among Hospitalized Patients with ESKD"
Striking racial and ethnic disparities exist in the use of palliative care by hospitalized patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) on dialysis, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report. The findings were published today in Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Palliative care is team-based care focused on improving quality of life and reducing suffering for people with serious illness and their families. To investigate palliative care use, the researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) from 2006 to 2014, which affords a large pool of minority (black, Hispanic, and Asian) and white patients. While the researchers found a clear increase in palliative care utilization for all inpatients with ESKD, they also identified significant variations among minorities compared to white patients which persisted across all hospital subtypes, even hospitals that serve a large proportion of minority patients.
— Girish Nadkarni, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Nephrology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai