Individually Tailored Palliative Care in a Rural Region: A Representative Chart Survey and Physicians’ Experiences with Integrated Care

Table 1

Physician characteristics ().

		%
Physician characteristics
Licensed for the survey region	15	100.0
Participated in survey	14	93.3
Cared for palliative care patients in the biennial period	13	86.7
Gender
Male	11	78.6
Female	3	21.4
Age, in years (average, SD, range)	50.6 (6.1)	40–62
Specialty
Family or internal medicine	11	73.3
Other specialties	4	26.7
Practice type
Solo practice	8	57.1
Group practice	6	42.9
Palliative patients per physician (average, SD, range)	6.5 (3.7)	0–10
Physician home visits in end-of-life period (average, SD, range)	10.4 (6.1)	1–31
Distance from physician practice to patient, in kilometers (average, SD, range)	5.2 (3.3)	1–18
Physician availability
24 h availability for all patients of practice	5	35.7
24 h availability for selected patients of own practice	3	21.4
Refers to palliative care patients to physician on duty when own office is closed	6	42.9

  means % unless marked otherwise.