Using EPIC to Identify Palliative Care Candidates

Background: Palliative care can help alleviate discomfort and align patients' care with their wishes at the end of life. It can also help avoid unnecessary testing and resource utilization. Palliative care is available in most hospitals, but may be underused. The EPIC platform contains an end-of-life index (EOLI) score calculator, which has been validated on a general outpatient population. This score may help identify candidates for palliative care. Objective: To test the performance of EOLI score on a high-risk population of hospitalized oncology patients. Design: Retrospective, observational cohort study. Participants: Adult patients with active cancer admitted to the oncology service of a single large academic hospital. Methods: 871 qualifying patients were identified through the Northwestern Enterprise Data Warehouse. Mortality at 6 months was the primary outcome. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of the area under the curve provided optimal sensitivity and specificity more...