• Hugh Walker, Mark Anderson, Farah Farahati, Doris Howell, S Lawrence Librach, Amna Husain, Jonathan Sussman, Raymond Viola, Rinku Sutradhar, and Lisa Barbera.
• Departments of Oncology and of Community Health and Epidemiology, Queen's University, 10 Stuart Street, 2nd Level, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. hugh@walkereconomics.com
• J Palliat Care. 2011 Jan 1;27(2):79-88.

AbstractThe objective of this study is to estimate the direct medical cost of end-of-life and palliative (EOL/PAL) care for cancer patients during the last six months of their lives--or, during the period from diagnosis to death, if briefer--in 2002 and 2003, in Ontario, Canada. A linkage of cancer registry and administrative data is used to determine the costs of health care resources used during the EOL/PAL care period. Costs are analyzed by cancer diagnosis, location of death, and type of service. The total Ontario Ministry of Health-funded cost of EOL/PAL care for cancer patients is estimated to be about CAD$544 million per year, with an average per patient cost of about $25,000 in 2002-2003. Our results suggest that acute care consumes 75 percent of EOL/PAL funding and that only a small proportion of health care services used by EOL/PAL care cancer patients is likely to be formal palliative care.

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