For the study, researchers analyzed more than 215,000 Medicare patients with poor-prognosis cancer and the care provided to them at approximately 4,400 hospitals nationwide from 2003 through 2007. Each hospital’s care was compared based on distinct characteristics: community hospitals, academic medical centers, for-profit and non-profit, in addition to those with special cancer care designation.
In addition to comparable performance on quality standards for cancer patients, the researchers found significant variations among these institutions in the rates of intensive care unit use in the last month of life, chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life, deaths occurring in the hospital and the use of hospice care for fewer than three days.
“These results indicate the need for a broad reexamination of end-of-life cancer care and whether it meets the needs and wants of patients. We recommend that efforts to improve the quality of end-of-life care extend to every type of hospital, regardless of their designation,” one author wrote.
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