Functional and clinical needs of older hospice enrollees with coexisting dementia.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Medicare Hospice Benefit increasingly serves people dying with dementia. We sought to understand characteristics, hospice use patterns, and last-month-of-life care quality ratings among hospice enrollees with dementia coexisting with another terminal illness as compared to enrollees with a principal hospice diagnosis of dementia, and enrollees with no dementia.

Methods

We conducted a pooled cross-sectional study among decedent Medicare beneficiaries age 70+ using longitudinal data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) (last interview before death; after-death proxy interview) linked to Medicare hospice claims (2011-2017). We used unadjusted and adjusted regression analyses to compare characteristics of hospice enrollees with coexisting dement

SUBMITTER: Harrison KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10023265 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature