Comparing the quality of death for hospice and non-hospice cancer patients.

In this secondary analysis of data from the National Hospice Study (NHS), a new measure, quality of death (QOD), was developed by weighting reports of cancer patients' last 3 days of life by what patients wanted their last 3 days to be like. Using analysis of covariance, the QOD scores were higher for terminally ill patients in hospices (either home-care [HC] or hospital-based [HB]) than similar patients who received conventional care (CC). The results are discussed in terms of verification of the hospice philosophy and other uses for a quality of death measure.