Patients with advanced cancer who discuss end-of-life care with their physicians appear to have lower healthcare costs in the final week of life than those who do not, according to a report in the March 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
A disproportionate share of medical costs occurs at the end of life, the article notes. Almost one-third of Medicare expenditures are attributable to the 5 percent of beneficiaries who die each year, and about one-third of expenses in the last year of life are spent in the final month. Previous studies suggest that most of these costs result from life-sustaining care, including resuscitation and mechanical ventilation.
The study found that in the final week of life, patients who reported having end-of-life discussions with their physicians had average aggregate healthcare costs of $1,876, compared with $2,917 for patients who did not. Formal and informal caregivers who were interviewed after patients’ deaths reported that those with higher costs also had a worse quality of death in their final week.
Read the article.
