Hospice Care Gap: Racial Disparities Persist Even When Care Is Nearby

A BMC Medicine study suggests that even when hospice care is nearby, racial disparities in enrollment persist for older Americans with poor-prognosis cancer. Using Medicare fee-for-service data, researchers analyzed beneficiaries who died with such cancers in the United States during 2018 and examined how hospice availability related to hospice use. They applied logistic mixed-effect regression to account for individual and neighborhood factors, including age, sex, race and ethnicity, driving distance to the nearest hospice, rurality, neighborhood income, and local racial composition. Women, older patients, and those in urban ZIP codes had higher odds of enrolling. However, Black, Hispanic, and Asian beneficiaries were still significantly less likely to use hospice than White beneficiaries even after adjustments. The study also found statistically significant interactions between race and neighborhood income and demographics, indicating effects vary across groups.