In a conversation with California Healthline, David Goodman — professor of pediatrics and health policy at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and co-director of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care — discussed his institution’s current research on variations in pediatric care quality and end-of-life care.
According to Goodman, researchers are finding that patients often receive highly aggressive care at the end of life even though most people facing life-threatening illnesses would prefer to spend time at home and avoid painful procedures. He added that the type of end-of-life care that patients receive often varies from hospital to hospital.
Goodman noted that researchers hope to collect additional data on care quality for patients under age 65 so they can study variations in care quality from the beginning to the end of life (California Healthline, 8/29).
The complete transcript of this report is available as a PDF.