End-of-life Advance Directives Curb Medicare Costs In High-Spending Areas October 7, 2011 Medicare, News, Physician Resource advance directives, Medicare costs, POLST 0 A new study in the October 5, 2011 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that advance directives are linked to less Medicare spending, lower likelihood of dying in a hospital, and higher usage of hospice care in areas of the U.S. that tend to spend the most on end of life care generally. “Our results indicate a statistically and economically significant relationship between advance directives and regional practice patterns," Lauren Hersch Nicholas, the study's authors wrote. They found that in regions of the country where there tends to be a more aggressive treatment style for end-of-life care, Medicare spending was about $5,600 less per person who died with an advance directive. There was no significant spending difference found in locations with low to average end-of-life expenditures. Most participants with advance directives specified that they wanted to limit treatment. For people in high-spending regions with advance directives specifying limitation of treatments at the end of life, 41% received hospice care, compared with 24% among people without these documents. How much weight an advance directive carries differs by state. Visit Caringinfo.org to view California’s regulation. Click here to download a copy of the Physicians' Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form. Source: Modern Healthcare, October 4, 2011. Comments are closed.
