Longer Periods Of Hospice Service Associated With Lower End-Of-Life Spending In Regions With High Expenditures.

ABSTRACT: Hospice use is expected to decrease end-of-life expenditures, yet evidence for its financial impact remains inconclusive. One potential explanation is that the use of hospice may produce differential cost-savings effects by region because of geographic variation in end-of-life spending patterns. We examined 103,745 elderly Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program Medicare database who died from cancer in 2004-11. We created quintiles by the adjusted mean end-of-life expenditures per hospital referral region (HRR), and we examined HRR-level variation in the association between length of hospice service and expenditures across quintiles. Longer periods of hospice service were associated with decreased end-of-life expenditures for patie

SUBMITTER: Wang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5972542 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature