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The Health Care Cost of Dying: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study of the Last Year of Life in Ontario, Canada

Coordinated and appropriate health care across sectors is an ongoing challenge. The baby boomer cohort effect coupled with an extension of life-expectancy has led to great concern among funders and policy makers that elder and end-of-life care will place unprecedented strain on the publicly funded health care system. However, there is currently little population- and system-wide data to identify the relative contributions of patient characteristics and components of healthcare delivery responsible for healthcare costs at the end of life. Moreover, population-level data on end-of-life health care use and cost are seldom reported across a comprehensive array of sectors, which has a potential in identifying the level of care being provided and areas where care can be optimized.