Secondary outcome measures
Survival—We abstracted the time from study enrollment to
death from medical charts.
Late hospice referrals—We determined the duration of hospice
services through chart review and interviews with caregivers.
We defined late referrals to a hospice as one week or less before
death.11
Attainment of preferred place of death—In postmortem
interviews, we asked caregivers, “Do you think that the place
of death was where the patient would have most wanted to die?”Patients whose caregivers responded “yes” were designated as
having died where they wanted to.