A population-level evaluation of the quality and cost-effectiveness of end-of-life care

Care often tends to focus on cure and life-prolonging treatments until the very last stages of life, even when no longer warranted or beneficial. This ‘aggressiveness’ of end-of-life care impacts the quality and costs in the last phase of life. Up to date no robust population-level evaluation of the quality and costs of end-of-life care exists outside of North America. As collecting population-level data (across settings and types of care) would be an immense and costly effort, the challenge lies in making an efficient use of administratively collected data.