Place of death for patients with cancer in the United States, 1999 through 2015: Racial, age, and geographic disparities

Background: Place of death is an essential component of high quality cancer care and comprehensive national trends and disparities in place of death are unknown.

Methods: Deidentified death certificate data were obtained via the National Center for Health Statistics. All cancer deaths from 1999 through 2015 were included. Multivariate logistic regression was used to test for disparities in place of death associated with sociodemographic variables.

Results: From 1999 through 2015, a total of 9,646,498 cancer deaths occurred. Hospital deaths decreased (from 36.6% to 24.6%), whereas the rate of home deaths (38.4% to 42.6%) and hospice facility deaths (0% to 14.0%) both increased (all P<.001). On multivariate logistic regression, all assessed variables were found to be associated with place of death. Specifically, younger age (age birth-14 years: odds ratio [OR], 2.39; age 25-44 years: OR, 1.62), black (OR, 1.83) or Asian (OR, 1.74) race, and Hispanic ethnicity (OR, 1.41) were associated with hospital death. Being married (OR, 2.17) or widowed (OR, 1.56) was associated with home death whereas increasing educational level (OR, 1.15-1.19) was associated with hospice death (all P<.001). Despite overall improvements, certain disparities were found to increase. For young patients, the likelihood of a hospital death increased from 2.3 times to 3.4 times that of older patients (50.9% for those aged 15-24 years vs 15.0% for those aged ≥85 years in 2015). For black patients, the likelihood of a hospital death increased from 1.29 times to 1.42 times that of white patients (32.8% for black patients vs 23.1% for white patients in 2015).

Conclusions: Hospital cancer deaths decreased by approximately one-third with commensurate increases in home and hospice facility deaths. Many sociodemographic groups experience significant disparities with regard to place of death and may benefit from targeted efforts to improve goal-concordant care.