ArticlePalliative medicine2021
Association between high cost user status and end-of-life care in hospitalized patients: A national cohort study of patients who die in hospital.
Article in Palliative medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association of Palliative Care Initiation With Acute Healthcare Utilization Among Community-Dwelling Adults Living With Dementia.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2026Article
- Palliative Care Needs in Advanced Non-Malignant Chronic Conditions: A Qualitative Study of Greek Patients' and Caregivers' Perspectives.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Turning toward mortality: yoga'sFrontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Dying to pay: end-of-life medical costs for middle-aged and older adult patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Utilization of Municipal Healthcare Services Among High-Cost Older Patients in Norwegian Somatic Hospitals: A Cross-Sectional Registry Study.Health services insights · 2025Article
- Describing settings of care in the last 100 days of life for cancer decedents: a population-based descriptive study.Cancer medicine · 2023Article
- Association of patient sex with use of palliative care in Ontario, Canada: a population-based study.CMAJ openArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundStudies comparing end-of-life care between patients who are high cost users of the healthcare system compared to those who are not are lacking.
aimThe objective of this study was to describe and measure the association between high cost user status and several health services outcomes for all adults in Canada who died in acute care, compared to non-high cost users and those without prior healthcare use. SETTINGS AND
participantsWe used administrative data for all adults who died in hospital in Canada between 2011 and 2015 to measure the odds of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), receipt of invasive interventions, major surgery, and receipt of palliative care during the hospitalization in which the patient died. High cost users were defined as those in the top 10% of acute healthcare costs in the year prior to a person's hospitalization in which they died.
resultsAmong 252,648 people who died in hospital, 25,264 were high cost users (10%), 112,506 were non-high cost users (44.5%) and 114,878 had no prior acute care use (45.5%). After adjustment for age and sex, high cost user status was associated with a 14% increased odds of receiving an invasive intervention, a 15% increased odds of having major surgery, and an 8% lower odds of receiving palliative care compared to non-high cost users, but opposite when compared to patients without prior healthcare use.
conclusionsMany patients receive aggressive elements of end-of-life care during the hospitalization in which they die and a substantial number do not receive palliative care. Understanding how this care differs between those who were previously high- and non-high cost users may provide an opportunity to improve end of life care for whom better care planning and provision ought to be an equal priority.
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