Search | Search by Center | Search by Source | Keywords in Title
Keating NL, Landrum MB, Huskamp HA, Kouri EM, Prigerson HG, Schrag D, Maciejewski PK, Hornbrook MC, Haggstrom DA. Dartmouth Atlas Area-Level Estimates of End-of-Life Expenditures: How Well Do They Reflect Expenditures for Prospectively Identified Advanced Lung Cancer Patients? Health services research. 2016 Aug 1; 51(4):1584-94.
OBJECTIVE: Assess validity of the retrospective Dartmouth hospital referral region (HRR) end-of-life spending measures by comparing with health care expenditures from diagnosis to death for prospectively identified advanced lung cancer patients. DATA/SETTING/DESIGN: We calculated health care spending from diagnosis (2003-2005) to death or through 2011 for 885 patients aged = 65 years with advanced lung cancer using Medicare claims. We assessed the association between Dartmouth HRR-level spending in the last 2 years of life and patient-level spending using linear regression with random HRR effects, adjusting for patient characteristics. FINDINGS: For each $1 increase in the Dartmouth metric, spending for our cohort increased by $0.74 (p < .001). The Dartmouth spending variable explained 93.4 percent of the HRR-level variance in observed spending. CONCLUSIONS: HRR-level spending estimates for deceased patient cohorts reflect area-level care intensity for prospectively identified advanced lung cancer patients.