Background: In a patient-centred model of care, referral to early palliative care (EPC) depends on both the prognosis and the complexity of care needs. The PALCOM scale is a 5-domain multidimensional assessment tool developed to identify the level of complexity of palliative care needs of cancer patients. The aim of this study was to validate the PALCOM scale.
Patient and methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of cancer patients to compare the PALCOM scale and expert empirical assessment (EA) of the complexity of palliative care needs. The EA had to categorise patients according to their complexity, considering that medium to high levels required priority attention from specialist EPC teams, while those with low levels could be managed by non-specialist teams. Systematically collected multidimensional variables were recorded in an electronic report form and stratified by level of complexity and rating system (PALCOM scale versus EA). The correlation rank (Kendall's tau test) and accuracy test (F1-score) between the two rating systems were analysed. ROC curve analysis was used to determine the predictive power of the PALCOM scale.
Results: A total of 283 advanced cancer patients were included. There were no significant differences in the frequency of the levels of complexity between the EA and the PALCOM scale (low 22.3-23.7%; medium 57.2-59.0%; high 20.5-17.3%). The prevalence of high symptom burden, severe pain, functional impairment, socio-familial risk, existential/spiritual problems, 6-month mortality and in-hospital death was significantly higher (p < 0.001) at the high complexity levels in both scoring systems. Comparative analysis showed a high correlation rank and accuracy between the two scoring systems (Kendall's tau test 0.81, F1 score 0.84). The predictive ability of the PALCOM scale was confirmed by an area under the curve in the ROC analysis of 0.907 for high and 0.902 for low complexity.
Conclusions: In a patient-centred care model, the identification of complexity is a key point to appropriate referral and management of shared care with EPC teams. The PALCOM scale is a high precision tool for determining the level of complexity of palliative care needs.
Keywords: advanced cancer; complexity of care needs; early palliative care; integration of palliative care in oncology; predictive model of complexity; specialist palliative care.