Dying at Home: A Privilege for Those with Time and Money

Abstract

The preference for dying at home, as opposed to in a hospital or other facility, is well established. So too are the cost savings for provincial governments from home deaths. Despite these aligned objectives, many individuals who could and would prefer to die at home find themselves dying in a hospital. In this article, we examine how time and money costs are associated with the home death outcome using Canadian Vital Statistics death records from 2007 to 2019. The focus is on cancer-related deaths, for which patients often have the time to think about and plan the location of death.