Socioeconomic Factors Associated With Posthospitalization Hospice Care Settings

Abstract

Investigating whether socioeconomic characteristics determine if hospice is received at home or in a medical facility is important to examine, considering most patients prefer to die at home. This study relied upon The State Inpatient Data of Nevada. A total of 19 206 discharges were analyzed from the data set between 2009 and 2013. The results indicate that increasingly patients are being discharged to home and overall socioeconomic characteristics appear to have less of an influence over whether hospice is received at home or in a medical facility. Further research on the perspectives of patients would provide insight into whether patients’ preferences or socioeconomic characteristics are more influential on where hospice services are received.