Medicare and Medicaid recipients, minorities receive more low-value, aggressive cancer care at end of life, study finds

McKnight's September 22, 2021
Alicia Lasek

At the end of life, Medicare and Medicaid recipients and people from racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to receive low-value, aggressive cancer interventions, a new study has found.

Investigators examined health records of more than 21,000 patients with metastatic cancer (cancer which has spread from the initial site). They found that people of Black and Asian or Pacific Islander race, Hispanic ethnicity, with public insurance status, and who were admitted to an urban teaching hospital were more likely to receive this suboptimal care.

Together with the results of past studies, the current findings suggest that several clinical care factors are associated with disparities in end-of-life inpatient care management, wrote C. Jillian Tsai, M.D., Ph.D., of the Memorial...

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