Drs. Halpern, Courtright Win $27.5 Million Grant to Study Palliative Care in Hospital Setting
Congratulations to Drs. Scott Halpern and Katherine Courtright, both researchers from the PAIR Center and also CHIBE affiliates, who recently won $27.5 million in grant funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study palliative care in the hospital setting.
“National guidelines recommend that clinicians provide palliative care as a standard part of care for serious illnesses—which affect millions of Americans and their families—and studies have shown that palliative care delivery improves outcomes for seriously ill hospitalized patients,” the Penn Medicine press release explained. “Palliative care also helps patients and their loved ones spend more of their time pursuing their life goals without symptoms or other burdens. However, the best way to deliver palliative care for hospitalized patients with chronic, incurable, or life-limiting diseases remains uncertain. There aren’t enough palliative care specialists to reach all patients in need, a problem that is expected to grow as the population ages and more people are affected by serious illnesses. One solution may be to train and prompt generalists—the nurses, advanced practice providers, physicians, and social workers who make up a patient’s primary hospital team—to provide palliative care themselves. But while this approach should be able to reach more patients, it’s unknown if this would be as effective as specialist-led care, or which patients might benefit most from which approach.”
Dr. Halpern is the Director of the PAIR Center and also serves on CHIBE’s internal advisory board. Dr. Courtright is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine.