A new tool could help predict death sooner and improve care for the dying

A new study found that many older adults do not receive palliative care at home and suggested that new ways of identifying those in their final six months of life, such as an evidence-based mortality calculator, can help send much-needed support their way. 

In the final years of her mother’s dementia, marked by deep declines and unexpected recoveries, Katrina Prescott provided a kind of medical care, without the training.

Prescott lost count of the times that death had seemed near but in April of 2022, when it was clearly imminent, she sat alone in her Vancouver apartment, listening to her mother breathing, while reading the drug schedule left by a visiting palliative-care doctor. He placed a subcutaneous port in her mother's stomach and told Prescott how to inject pain medication to ease the pain of dying.

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