UCLA

Background

Understanding how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected site of death-an important patient-centered outcome related to end-of-life care-would inform healthcare system resiliency in future public health emergencies.

Objective

To evaluate the changes in site of death during the COVID-19 pandemic among older adults without a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Design

Using a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences method, we estimated net changes in site of death during the pandemic period (March-December 2020) from the pre-pandemic period (January-February 2020), using data on the same months in prior years (2016-2019) as the control.

Participants

A 20% sample of Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries aged 66 years and older who died in 2016-2020. We excluded beneficiaries with a hospital diagnosis of COVID-19.

Main measures

We assessed each of the following sites of death separately: (1) home or community; (2) acute care hospital; and (3) nursing home.

Key results

We included 1,133,273 beneficiaries without a hospital diagnosis of COVID-19. We found that the proportion of Medicare beneficiaries who died at home or in the community setting increased (difference-in-differences [DID] estimate, + 3.1 percentage points [pp]; 95% CI, + 2.6 to + 3.6 pp; P < 0.001) and the proportion of beneficiaries who died (without COVID-19 diagnosis) in an acute care hospital decreased (- 0.8 pp; 95% CI, - 1.2 to - 0.4 pp; P < 0.001) during the pandemic. We found no evidence that the proportion of deaths in nursing homes changed during the pandemic.

Conclusions

Using national data on older adults without a COVID-19 diagnosis, we found that site of death shifted toward home or community settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings may inform clinicians and policymakers in supporting end-of-life care during future public health emergencies.