Palliative Care Team Involvement in Patients With COVID-19 in New York City

Abstract

Background: With the highest number of cases in the world as of April 13, 2020, New York City (NYC) became the epicenter of the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The data regarding palliative team involvement in patients with COVID-19, however, remains scarce. We aimed to investigate outcomes of palliative team involvement for the patients with COVID-19 in NYC. Methods: Consecutive 225 patients with confirmed COVID-19 requiring hospitalization in our urban academic medical center in NYC were analyzed. Patients were divided into 2 groups, those with a palliative care consult (palliative group: 14.2% [n = 32]) versus those with no palliative care consult (no palliative group: 85.8% [n = 193]). Results: The palliative group was older and had more comorbidities. During the hospital course, the palliative group had more intensive care unit stays, rapid response team activations, and more use of vasopressors (P