Home Health Care and Place of Death in Medicare Beneficiaries With and Without Dementia.

Background And Objectives: Home health care supports patient goals for aging in place. Our objective was to determine if home health care use in the last 3 years of life reduces the risk of inpatient death without hospice.

Research Design And Methods: We analyzed the characteristics of 2,065,300 Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2019 and conducted multinomial logistic regression analyses to evaluate the association between the use and timing of home health care, dementia diagnosis, and place of death.

Home Health Care and Hospice Use Among Medicare Beneficiaries With and Without a Diagnosis of Dementia.

Home health care is a core benefit of Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs and includes services to improve health, maintain health, or slow health decline. To examine the relationship between home health care use during the last three years of life and hospice use in the last six months of life among Medicare beneficiaries with and without dementia. Nationally representative retrospective cohort study.

Place of care in the last three years of life for Medicare beneficiaries.

Background: Most older adults prefer aging in place; however, patients with advanced illness often need institutional care. Understanding place of care trajectory patterns may inform patient-centered care planning and health policy decisions. The purpose of this study was to characterize place of care trajectories during the last three years of life.