Dartmouth Atlas Area‐Level Estimates of End‐of‐Life Expenditures: How Well Do They Reflect Expenditures for Prospectively Identified Advanced Lung Cancer Patients?

Objective Assess validity of the retrospective Dartmouth hospital referral region (HRR) end-of-life spending measures by comparing with health care expenditures from diagnosis to death for prospectively identified advanced lung cancer patients. Data/Setting/Design We calculated health care spending from diagnosis (2003–2005) to death or through 2011 for 885 patients aged ≥65 years with advanced lung cancer using Medicare claims. We assessed the association between Dartmouth HRR-level spending in the last 2 years of life and patient-level spending using linear regression with random HRR effects, adjusting for patient characteristics. Findings For each $1 increase in the Dartmouth metric, spending for our cohort increased by $0.74 (p