Association Between Hospice Enrollment and Total Health Care Costs for Insurers and Families, 2002-2018.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Use of hospice has been demonstrated to be cost saving to the Medicare program and yet the extent to which hospice saves money across all payers, including whether it shifts costs to families, is unknown.

Objective

To estimate the association between hospice use and total health care costs including family out-of-pocket health care spending.

Design setting and participants

This retrospective cohort study of health care spending in the last 6 months of life used data from the nationally representative Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) between the years 2002 and 2018. Participants were MCBS participants who resided in the community and died between 2002 and 2018.

Exposures

Covariate balancing propensity scores were used to compare participants

SUBMITTER: Aldridge MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8903119 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature