U.S. end-of-life care receives good marks but is still pricey
The United States compares well to six other developed nations on some measures of end-of-life care, such as the percentage of patients who die in the hospital, but we're still on the pricey side, according to the first international comparison of its kind.
The United States compares well to six other developed nations on some measures of end-of-life care, such as the percentage of patients who die in the hospital, but we're still on the pricey side, according to the first international comparison of its kind.
Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, was senior author of the paper, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It compared site of death, health-care use, and hospital cost for cancer patients over 65 in Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the U.S.
Among the findings:
The U.S. had the lowest proportion of patients die in acute-care hospitals, 22.2 percent.
But 40 percent of U.S. patients were in an intensive care unit at some point during their last six months of life, far more than in other countries.
The U.S. ranked third on average in per-capita hospital costs, at $18,500. Canada was the most expensive, at $21,840.
- Stacey Burling
