Advance Directives Completion and Hospital Out-of-pocket Expenditures

Overview

Journal J Hosp Med

Publisher Wiley

Specialties General Medicine
Health Services

Date 2022 May 9

PMID 35527477

Authors

Yujun Zhu

Susan Enguidanos

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Introduction: Health care costs remain high at the end of life. It is not known if there is a relationship between advance directive (AD) completion and hospital out-of-pocket costs. This analysis investigated whether AD completion was associated with lower hospital out-of-pocket costs at end of life.

Methods: We used Health and Retirement Study participants who died between 2000 and 2014 (N = 9228) to examine the association between AD completion status and hospital out-of-pocket spending in the last 2 years of life through the use of a two-part model controlling for socioeconomic status, death-related characteristics and health insurance coverage.

Results: About 44% of decedents had completed ADs. Having an AD was significantly associated with $673 lower hospital out-of-pocket costs, with a higher magnitude of savings among younger decedents. Decedents who completed ADs 3 months or less before death had higher out-of-pocket costs ($1854 on average) than those who completed ADs more than 3 months before death ($1176 on average).

Conclusions: AD completion was significantly associated with lower hospital out-of-pocket costs, with greater out-of-pocket savings among younger decedents. Early AD completers experienced lower costs than decedents who completed ADs closer to death.

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