Acuity Score to Predict Patient Hospitalization: A Useful Tool for Home-Based Palliative Care

Background: Developing better acuity models to predict hospital re-admissions is vital to providing high qualitive outpatient palliative care services. Objective: Determine if an acuity tool could accurately predict those patients with the highest risk for hospital admission within 30 days following a palliative medicine home visit. Design: A retrospective observational study evaluating an outpatient practitioner-administered acuity model to determine how different acuity scores corresponded with specific follow-up intervals. Setting/Subjects: The study was conducted in patients’ residences, analyzing home-based outpatient palliative care visits provided by Wellstar Health System clinicians across 4 Georgia counties. Results: Two hundred and ninety-one patients were included in our study. 78% of patients did not experience a hospital admission within 30 days following their most recent palliative medicine home visit, while 22% (n = 64) did. The average overall acuity score was 10.93. The average acuity score for the individuals not admitted was 9.66, while the score for those admitted was 15.44. Conclusion: The acuity score was a significant predictor of the probability of hospitalization ( P < .0001), and the odds of a hospitalization increased by 7.0% for each additional unit in the acuity score.