Interdisciplinary Team Care and Hospice Team Provider Visit Patterns during the Last Week of Life.

Background: Hospice provides intensive end-of-life care to patients and their families delivered by an interdisciplinary team of nurses, aides, chaplains, social workers, and physicians. Significant gaps remain about how team members respond to diverse needs of patients and families, especially in the last week of life.

Objective: The study objective was to describe the frequency of hospice team provider visits in the last week of life, to examine changes in frequency over time, and to identify patient characteristics that were associated with an increase in visit frequency.

Increasing inpatient hospice use versus patient preferences in the USA: are patients able to die in the setting of their choice?

Background: Growth in hospice utilisation has been accompanied by an increase in the proportion of hospice patients who die in an inpatient hospice setting rather than at home.

Objective: To determine whether this increase in inpatient utilisation is consistent with patient preferences.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Patterns of functional decline in hospice: what can individuals and their families expect?

Objectives: To describe the trajectory of functional decline after an individual is referred to hospice.

Design: Electronic health record-based retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Three hospice programs in the U.

Which hospice patients with cancer are able to die in the setting of their choice? Results of a retrospective cohort study.

Purpose: To determine which hospice patients with cancer prefer to die at home and to define factors associated with an increased likelihood of dying at home.

Methods: An electronic health record-based retrospective cohort study was conducted in three hospice programs in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Main measures included preferred versus actual site of death.