Access to Palliative Care for Patients Undergoing Mechanical Ventilation With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: The utilization of palliative care (PC) in patients with end-stage idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is not well understood.

METHODS: The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) was utilized to examine the use of PC in mechanically ventilated (MV) patients with IPF. The NIS captures 20% of all US inpatient hospitalizations and is weighted to estimate 95% of all inpatient care.

RESULTS: A total of 55 208 382 hospital admissions from the 2006 to 2012 NIS samples were examined. There were 21 808 patients identified with pulmonary fibrosis, of which 3166 underwent mechanical ventilation and were included in the analysis. Of the 3166 patients in the main cohort, 408 (12.9%) had an encounter with PC, whereas 2758 (87.1%) did not. After multivariate logistic regression modeling, variables associated with increased access to PC referral were age (odds ratio [OR]: 1.02, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01-1.03, P < .01), treatment in an urban teaching hospital (OR: 1.49, 95% CI: 1.27-3.58, P < .01), and do-not-resuscitate status (OR: 9.86, 95% CI: 7.48-13.00, P < .01). Factors associated with less access to PC were Hispanic race (OR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.41-0.99, P = .04) and missing race (OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.34-0.79, P < .01), with white race serving as the reference. The use of PC has increased almost 10-fold from 2.3% in 2006 to 21.6% in 2012 ( P < .01).

CONCLUSION: The utilization of PC in patients with IPF who undergo MV has increased dramatically between 2006 and 2012.