Making it easier to get palliative care in the hospital
Official title: Improving the delivery of inpatient palliative care: a hybrid type I pragmatic cluster trial
Funded at University of Pennsylvania · NIH-11370586 · Data updated 2026-11-12
Testing an electronic health record alert that helps hospital teams find and offer palliative care to adults with serious illness.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Pennsylvania NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Philadelphia, United States) |
| Project start | April 15, 2024 |
| Project end | March 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $675,353 |
| NIH project number | 5R01AG082874-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11370586 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are adults hospitalized with serious illnesses (including advanced cancer) who might have unmet palliative care needs.
✕Less likely to help
Patients who are not hospitalized, who already receive comprehensive palliative care, or who do not have serious illness needs are unlikely to benefit directly from this trial.
What this research studies
If you're hospitalized with a serious illness, this project tests a new way hospitals use electronic health records to spot patients who may need palliative care and prompt clinical teams to act. Hospitals (or hospital units) will be randomly assigned to use the automated needs-based 'trigger' in the EHR or to continue usual care, and clinicians will receive the alerts when patients meet the criteria. The study follows patients to see whether the approach leads to earlier specialist palliative care, better symptom relief, care that matches patients' goals, and different patterns of hospital resource use. The trial is embedded in real hospital practice to learn how the tool works in everyday care settings.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the approach could help more hospitalized patients get palliative care sooner and improve symptom relief and goal-concordant care.
How similar studies have gone: Some hospitals have used EHR-based triggers to find patients and showed improved identification, but it remains unclear whether triggers alone reliably improve patient outcomes in real-world trials.
Where this research is happening
-
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Courtright, Katherine Rinaldi — University of Pennsylvania
- Study coordinator: Courtright, Katherine Rinaldi
Related research
Other NIH-funded projects on the same topics.
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UNCOVER-PC: Helping people with advanced cancer and their families get better palliative care
A project at Emory aims to find the best ways to give palliative care early to people with advanced cancer and to understand how it helps patients and their caregivers.
-
Digitally supported community workers helping HPB cancer patients receive early palliative care
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ICUconnect 2: helping older ICU patients and families get better palliative care
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Caring for Older African Americans: Training Clinicians to Provide Quality End-of-Life Care
This grant aims to adapt and deliver a training program for clinicians so they can better understand and meet end-of-life care needs of older African American adults in both the South and North.
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Support-T: a mobile tool to help people with progressive pulmonary fibrosis and their caregivers get palliative care and planning
A mobile app called SUPPORT-T helps people with progressive pulmonary fibrosis and their caregivers access palliative care and plan for the future.
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Palliative care support for patients getting CAR T therapy for blood cancers
A clinician-led program designed to improve quality of life and ease the burden on patients and caregivers during and after CAR T cell therapy for blood cancers.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.