Trends in end-of-life cancer care in the Medicare program

To examine contemporary trends in end-of-life cancer care and geographic variation of end-of-life care aggressiveness among Medicare beneficiaries.Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare data, we identified 132,051 beneficiaries who died as a result of cancer in 2006-2011. Aggressiveness of end-of-life care was measured by chemotherapy received within 14 days of death, >1 emergency department (ED) visit within 30 days of...