Association between the Medicare hospice benefit and health care utilization and costs for patients with poor-prognosis cancer.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

More patients with cancer use hospice currently than ever before, but there are indications that care intensity outside of hospice is increasing, and length of hospice stay decreasing. Uncertainties regarding how hospice affects health care utilization and costs have hampered efforts to promote it.

Objective

To compare utilization and costs of health care for patients with poor-prognosis cancers enrolled in hospice vs similar patients without hospice care.

Design, setting, and participants

Matched cohort study of patients in hospice and nonhospice care using a nationally representative 20% sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries who died in 2011. Patients with poor-prognosis cancers (eg, brain, pancreatic, metastatic malignancies) enrolled in hospi

SUBMITTER: Obermeyer Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4274169 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature