Location of end of life

September 23, 2007 12:32 PM

Do most people die at home or in hospital (or other)?

Looking for a rough percentage type answer. eg Is it 50/50 or do most people die in hospital.

(Other means things like accidents in cars etc)

posted by pettins to health & fitness (7 comments total)

Today, although most people say they would prefer to die at home, 56% die in hospital and 19% in nursing homes.

That's for Americans. I suspect it's similar for Europre. World-wide, I have no doubt that most people die at home, or wherever they happen to be when illness, starvation or a bullet finally does them in.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:50 PM on September 23, 2007

I wonder if part of that 56% is because some people are taken to a hospital for rescusitation and only pronounced dead there -- even though they may have *actually* died elsewhere.
posted by InnocentBystander at 1:39 PM on September 23, 2007

This is going to be hugely dependent on location. There are various strains of thought about how much of the West has "outsourced" its end of life care, with nursing homes, hospitals, and mortuaries taking over the roles that families (or, at least, the female members of families) used to perform. I think any numbers that apply in one country or culture won't necessarily carry over to others.
posted by occhiblu at 1:49 PM on September 23, 2007

Most folks don't plan where they're going to die. Some people die in ambulances getting to or from hospitals. We do plenty of hospice patient discharges (hospital/nursing home -> private residence) and occasionally the patient will die before reaching the final (Earthly) destination.

Our county doesn't keep statistics, but individual hospitals might. Getting the data might be difficult, though. Sounds like you'd have to collect the number of patients that died in each hospital and subtract that number from the total number of deaths recorded...or something like that. Then you'd have to filter out the "Other."
posted by drstein at 5:09 PM on September 23, 2007

I wonder if part of that 56% is because some people are taken to a hospital for rescusitation and only pronounced dead there -- even though they may have *actually* died elsewhere.

Yeah. When you hear them mention on the news that someone was pronounced dead at the scene (e.g. of an accident), this basically means that it was completely obvious without medical expertise that one should call a coroner and not an ambulance. If the injuries aren't obviously unsurvivable and they haven't obviously been dead for a long time, they go to the hospital.
posted by winston at 5:24 PM on September 23, 2007

I'll die in hospital, surrounded by no one.
posted by parmanparman at 11:48 PM on September 23, 2007

The answer is going to vary within very small distances, depending on local culture and the availability of home support. Hospice organisations and the Visiting Nurse Association might be sources of information.
posted by Idcoytco at 3:46 AM on September 24, 2007