State Palliative Care Laws Impact Where Patients Die
Hospice News June 14, 2023
Recent research has found that varying state laws around palliative care can impact cancer patients’ place of death.
Cancer patients in states with laws that require health care providers to provide palliative consultations were more likely to die in the home or in an inpatient hospice setting versus the hospital, a JAMA Network Open study found.
The cohort study analyzed site-of-death data from 2005 through 2017, including more than 7.5 million individuals with cancer across the 50 states (but not the District of Columbia). Researchers compared trends among states that had palliative care lows on their books against those that did not.
During that time frame, “prescriptive” palliative laws stipulating that health care providers communicate all end-of-life care options was...