Gap Between Refractory Symptoms or End-of-Life Care Needs and Eligibility for the Palliative Care Fee in Patients With Endstage Heart Failure ― A Single-Center Retrospective Study in Japan ―

Background: International guidelines recommend integrating palliative care into heart failure (HF) management. In Japan, the additional medical fee for palliative care became applicable to endstage HF in 2018, but its adoption has remained very low, so we examined how well the current eligibility criteria capture HF hospitalizations with refractory symptoms or end-of-life care needs.