Effects of offering advance directives on medical treatments and costs

Effects of offering advance directives on medical treatments and costs

Schneiderman LJ; Kronick R; Kaplan RM; Anderson JP; Langer RD

Annals Of Internal Medicine

1992

Humans; Personal Autonomy; Withholding Treatment; Prospective Studies; California; Hospitals; Empirical Approach; Professional Patient Relationship; Death and Euthanasia; DNAR Outcomes; Resource Allocation; Health Care and Public Health; Veterans; University; Advance Directives/ec [Economics]; Advance Directives/psychology; California Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care; Control Groups; Cost Control/methods; Life Support Care/utilization; Life Support Care/economics; Patient Satisfaction/statistics & numerical data; Risk Assessment

Objective: To examine the effects of advance directives on medical treatments and on patient satisfaction and well-being and to determine whether the enhancement of patient autonomy through advance directives provides a more ethically feasible approach to cost control than does the imposition of limits through rationing.; Design: Randomized, controlled trial.; Setting: University and Veterans Affairs medical center.; Patients: Two hundred and four patients with life-threatening illnesses, 100 of whom died after enrollment in the study.; Intervention: Patients randomly assigned to the experimental group were offered the California Durable Power of Attorney (a typical proxy-instruction directive), and patients assigned to the control group were not offered the advance directive. Hospital admissions were monitored to assure that a summary of the document was present in the active medical record at each hospitalization.; Measurements: Cognitive function, patient satisfaction, psychological well-being, health locus of control, sense of coherence, health-related quality of life, receipt of medical treatments, and medical treatment charges.; Results: No significant differences were found between advance-directive and control groups regarding psychosocial variables, health outcome variables, and medical treatments or charges. Patients offered an advance directive had an average hospital stay of 40.8 days (95% CI, 32.2 to 49.4 days), compared with an average of 33.1 days (95% CI, 26.0 to 40.2 days) for controls. Patients offered an advance directive were charged an average of $19,502 (95% CI, $13,030 to $25,974) for medical treatments in the last month of life compared with $19,700 (95% CI, $13,704 to $25,696) for controls.; Conclusions: Despite claims that public demand for longer life accounts for rising medical costs, most surveys suggest that patients are calling for less, not more, of the expensive, high-technology treatment often used in terminal phases of illness. Executing the California Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and having a summary copy placed in the patient's medical record had no significant positive or negative effect on a patient's well-being, health status, medical treatments, or medical treatment charges.;

1992-10

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