By Jessica McDonald
newsworks.org
Originally posted January 10, 2016
The United States has a reputation for providing costly -- and often unwanted -- end-of-life care. But the first study to do an international comparison finds it's not as egregious as we thought.
Compared with patients in other developed nations, Americans diagnosed with cancer spend more time in the intensive care unit and get more chemotherapy in the last months of their lives.
But fewer patients are in the hospital when they die. And the overall bill, while high, isn't the steepest. That honor goes to Canada.
"We found that end-of-life care in the United States is not the worst in the world, and I think that surprises a lot of people," said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.
The article is here.
