Hospital use in the last year of life.

Hospital and emergency department use in the last year of life : A baseline for future modifications to end-of-life care (MJA 2011; 194: 570–573),  by Lorna K. Rosenwax and others, has recently been published in the Medical Journal of Australia.  The study looked at a group of people in Western Australia, for whom death from cancer or one of another nine conditions was an expected outcome. The authors speculated that inappropriate use of hospital and emergency facilities could indicate a lack of community resources for some people, and that “quality of death” could be improved with better planning.