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Palliative care and cost savings
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A palliative care consultation team reduced the cost of care for New York Medicaid beneficiaries by $6,000 per patient (Summary here and full article here). The theory is that, by defining people's wishes early on in the hospital stay, you can avoid interventions that they do not want; for example, being ventilated in the ICU. And, as we all know, interventions in the hospital are expensive, so the more you can avoid, the lower the costs. I think these sorts of studies are the findings that invite the "death panel" comparisons, unfortunately. Palliative care still has a ways to go before we all see its value, but I feel like with this study (and others like it) and the recent New England Journal of Medicine article showing lung cancer patients who get palliative care actually live longer than those who do not get palliative care, perhaps the tides are finally changing.
Almost 10 years ago, I did a medical rotation in Australia in a hospital where everyone who had a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma or metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma had a palliative care consult, in addition to an oncology consult. It was beautiful because goals were defined early, and there was no stigma for the palliative care team. It is a system I believe we could benefit from here.