Executive summary The story of dying in the 21st century is a story of paradox. While many
people are overtreated in hospitals with families and communities relegated to the margins …

Efforts to promote the completion of advance directives implicitly assume that completion
rates of these documents, which help ensure care consistent with people's preferences in …

In Norway, the Directorate of Health is responsible for two nationwide registries–the
Norwegian Patient Registry (NPR) and the Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care …

Background: High-quality care for seriously ill patients aligns treatment with their goals and
values. Failure to achieve “goal-concordant” care is a medical error that can harm patients …

Overuse, which is defined as the provision of medical services that are more likely to cause
harm than good, is a pervasive problem. Direct measurement of overuse through …

BACKGROUND Patients with advanced cancer often experience frequent and prolonged
hospitalizations; however, the factors associated with greater health care utilization have not …

Although end-of-life medical spending is often viewed as a major component of aggregate
medical expenditure, accurate measures of this type of medical spending are scarce. We …

OBJECTIVES To evaluate physicians' views on advance care planning, goals of care, and
end‐of‐life conversations. DESIGN Random sample telephone survey. SETTING United …

Background: Little population-level information exists about the delivery of palliative care
across multiple health sectors, important in providing a complete picture of current care and …

As the Medicare program struggles to control expenditures, there is increased focus on
opportunities to manage patient populations more efficiently and at a lower cost. A major …