Do end-of-life outcomes differ by assisted living memory-care designation?

Residential care/assisted living (RC/AL) is an increasingly common place of end-of-life care for persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD), who have unique care needs as their health declines. Approximately 22% of RC/ALs provide specialized memory care (memory-care RC/AL). Understanding how end-of-life outcomes differ by memory care among residents with ADRD could facilitate aging/dying in place for this population. The objective of this paper is to examine if end-of-life outcomes (i.e., mortality, hospice use, and number of days receiving hospice in the last month of life) differ between residents with ADRD who moved to memory-care RC/AL, compared with residents with ADRD who moved to RC/AL without memory care (general RC/AL).

Prospective cohort of 15,152 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries with ADRD who moved to large RC/AL (> = 25 beds) between 2016 and 2018. We used inverse probability treatment weighting to account for observable differences between memory-care and general RC/AL residents. Two-part models estimated the difference by memory care in the number of days receiving hospice care in the last months of life among RC/AL decedents.

The unadjusted mortality rates were 13.4% in general RC/AL and 15.8% in memory-care RC/AL with an adjusted difference of 1.3 percentage points higher mortality among memory-care RC/AL residents (p = 0.04). Hospice use was 8% and 10.6% among general and memory-care RC/AL residents, respectively, with an adjusted difference of 1.4 percentage points (p = 0.01) higher in memory care. Two-part models showed that decedents in memory-care RC/AL spent about 1.4 more days receiving hospice care in the last month of life (p = 0.02).

We find a higher mortality rate and higher rate of hospice use among memory-care RC/AL residents. These findings suggest that memory care may attract residents closer to the end of life and/or promote hospice use at the end of life.