Patterns of Health Care Use and Cost at the End of Life

The mission of MCHP is to provide accurate and timely information to health care decision-makers, analysts and providers, so they can offer services which are effective and efficient in maintaining and improving the health of Manitobans. Our researchers rely upon the unique Population Health Research Data Repository to describe and explain patterns of care and profiles of illness, and to explore other factors that influence health, including income, education, employment and social status. This Repository is unique in terms of its comprehensiveness, degree of integration , and orientation around an anonymized population registry. Members of MCHP consult extensively with government officials, health care administrators, and clinicians to develop a research agenda that is topical and relevant. This strength along with its rigorous academic standards enable MCHP to contribute to the health policy process. MCHP undertakes several major research projects, such as this one, every year under contract to Manitoba Health. In addition, our researchers secure external funding by competing for other research grants. We are widely published and internationally recognized. Further, our researchers collaborate with a number of highly respected scientists from Canada, the United States and Europe. Ethics Board for their review of this project. The Manitoba Centre for Health Policy complies with all legislative acts and regulations governing the protection and use of sensitive information. We implement strict policies and procedures to protect the privacy and security of anonymized data used to produce this report and we keep the provincial Health Information Privacy Committee informed of all work undertaken for Manitoba Health. i ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to acknowledge the contribution of the many individuals whose efforts and expertise made it possible to produce this report. We thank the following, and apologize in advance to anyone we might have overlooked: ● The "End of Life" Working Group for their suggestions and feedback as the project progressed: ● The WRHA for providing us with palliative registry data and Mike Harlos for helping us understand the data. ● Our external reviewers who provided detailed and insightful comments on the report: Helene Starks and Allison Williams. ● Eileen Pyke for the preparation of figures and tables and formatting of the deliver-able. We acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Health of the Province of Manitoba. The results and conclusions are those of the authors and no official endorsement by Manitoba Health was intended or should be inferred. This report was …