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TUESDAY, Aug. 27, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Hospitalized older adults transferred to a long-term acute care (LTAC) hospital have poor survival, with more than one-third never returning home, according to a study published online Aug. 26 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Anil N. Makam, M.D., from the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues examined the clinical course after admission to an LTAC hospital for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries aged 65 years or older. Data were included for 14,072 hospitalized older adults transferred to an LTAC hospital.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that median survival was 8.3 months and the one- and five-year survival rates were 45 and 18 percent, respectively. Fifty-three percent of participants never achieved a 60-day recovery following LTAC admission. Patients spent a median of 65.6 percent of their remaining life as an inpatient following LTAC admission. More than one-third of participants (36.9 percent) died in an inpatient setting, never returning home after admission to an LTAC. Overall, 30.9 percent received an artificial life-prolonging procedure and 1 percent had a palliative care consultation during the preceding hospitalization and index LTAC admission.<\/p>\n
“Given the exceedingly low rates of palliative care consultations and low penetration of hospice, future research is needed to examine unmet palliative care needs in this population,” the authors write.<\/p>\n
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