Table 1 Patient characteristics and healthcare use in the last two years of life (subgroup analyses for cancer, organ failure and multimorbidity patients)
General characteristics | Total (n = 119) | Cancer (n = 55) | Organ failure (n = 28) | Multimorbidity (n = 36) | P value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gender female, n (%) | 61 (51) | 29 (53) | 14 (50) | 18 (50) | 0.957* |
Age at time of death, mean (SD) | 79 (14) | 70 (14) | 84 (8) | 88 (7) | 0.000** |
Place of death, n (%) | 0.088*** | ||||
Home | 70 (59) | 35 (64) | 16 (57) | 19 (53) | |
Hospital | 32 (27) | 11 (20) | 7 (25) | 14 (39) | |
Hospice | 6 (5) | 6 (11) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | |
Long-term care facility | 4 (3) | 1 (2) | 1 (4) | 2 (6) | |
Unknown | 7 (6) | 2 (4) | 4 (14) | 1 (3) | |
EoL support, n (%) | |||||
Palliative sedation | 32 (27) | 22 (40) | 2 (7) | 8 (22) | 0.005* |
Euthanasia/assisted suicide | 5 (4) | 5 (9) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0.085*** |
Healthcare use, median (25th–75th percentile, range) | |||||
Number of hospitalizations | 1 (0–3, 0–15) | 2 (1–3, 0–11) | 2 (1–4, 0–15) | 0,5 (0–1, 0–4) | 0.000** |
Number of ED visits | 1 (0–2, 0–9) | 1 (0–3, 0–6) | 2 (1–3, 0–9) | 1 (0–1, 0–6) | 0.006** |
Number of GP out of office hours contacts | 1 (0–4, 0–22) | 1 (0–4, 0–22) | 2 (0–5, 0–6) | 1 (0–2, 0–8) | 0.316** |