Findings in the Area of Managed Care Reported from Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (End-of Life Care Disparities Experienced By American Indian and Alaska Natives Peoples: an Analysis of Data From the 2019 Medicare Master …): Managed Care

2025 JUN 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in Managed Care. According to news originating from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) adults experience higher rates of chronic diseases and mortality than non-Hispanic White (NHW) adults. Hospice can improve quality of life and reduce hospitalizations for those with terminal illness(es).”

Funders for this research include National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, NIH National Institute on Minority Health & Health Disparities (NIMHD), NIH National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, “To examine hospitalization and hospice use at the end-of-life between AI/AN and NHW patients and the associations of end-of-life hospitalization and hospice use with chronic diseases. Using data extracted from the 2019 Medicare Master Beneficiary Summary File, we estimated regression models to examine our aims among patients who died in 2019. Our sample included 6975 AI/AN patients and a 5% sample of 53,465 NHW patients aged >= 65 years. Data included patient demographics, health coverage, date of death, diagnosed chronic conditions, hospital inpatient days, and hospice days. The country of study was the United States. AI/AN patients at the end-of-life were more likely to be hospitalized and less likely to use hospice compared with their NHW counterparts. For both AI/AN and NHW patients, having a chronic condition was associated with increased hospital days; having dementia and cancer was associated with more hospice days; while diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, end-stage renal disease, and liver disease were associated with fewer hospice days.Conclusions and Relevance: Compared with NHW patients, AI/AN patients received poorer quality end-of-life care.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “More efforts are needed to understand the barriers and facilitators to hospice for AI/AN patients and in developing strategies that improve access to high-quality end-of-life care for AI/AN patients.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: End-of Life Care Disparities Experienced By American Indian and Alaska Natives Peoples: an Analysis of Data From the 2019 Medicare Master Beneficiary Summary File. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 2025. Journal of Palliative Medicine can be contacted at: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc, 140 Huguenot Street, 3RD Fl, New Rochelle, NY 10801, USA. (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. - www.liebertpub.com; Journal of Palliative Medicine - http://www.liebertpub.com/overview/journal-of-palliative-medicine/41/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Elizabeth Anderson, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Pob 1824, Chapel Hill, NC 28728, United States. Additional authors for this research include R. Turner Goins, Ruqoyat Abdulsalam, Joan O’Connell and Luohua Jiang.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2024.0481. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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