Chambers S, et al. - Researchers sought to track and quantify the health service utilisation of people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stages 3-5 over the last 12 months of life. They noted that use of acute health care services was avoided by only a few patients in a 12 month period, highlighting the high service needs of this cohort throughout the long, slow decline of CKD. It seems that proactive end-of-life care earlier in the disease trajectory through integrating renal and palliative care teams might avoid acute presentations to hospital through better symptom management and planned care pathways.