Palliative Care Specialist Use Among Medicare Decedents Who Had Poor-Prognosis Cancers.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Palliative care (PC) use patterns may have changed in recent years due to increased adoption of telehealth and the availability of more advanced practice clinicians who specialize in PC delivery.

Objective

To describe changes in the use of specialty PC during the last year of life among Medicare beneficiaries who had cancers with poor prognoses (cancers that commonly caused death, rare cancers with high mortality rates, or solid tumors with concurrent nonlymphatic metastases; hereinafter termed poor-prognosis cancers).

Design, setting, and participants

This retrospective cohort study includes all US Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries who died from poor-prognosis cancers between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2023, and received care in hospital and ou

SUBMITTER: Chua IS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12290731 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature