Dying in hospital among nursing home residents with and without dementia in Germany

Abstract

ObjectivesNursing home residents (NHR) often suffer from dementia. As end-of-life care of NHR with dementia and without might differ, our aim was to investigate patterns of in-hospital deaths in NHR with and without dementia. DesignRetrospective observational study. SettingGerman nursing homes. ParticipantsDeceased NHR. MeasurementsUsing data of a large German health insurance fund, we included NHR aged 65+ years who died between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014. We assessed proportions of in-hospital deaths stratified by dementia status as well as by age, sex, level of care and length of stay. Multiple logistic regression models were applied to explore the association of these variables with in-hospital death. ResultsData on 67,328 decedents were included (mean age 85.3 years, 69.8% female), of whom 43.1% suffered from dementia. Overall, 29.5% died in hospital, with similar figures found for those with dementia (29.2%) and those without (29.8%). Differences between NHR with and without dementia were noticeable regarding age and length of stay. In those with dementia, the proportion of in-hospital deaths decreased linearly with age from 37.0%–20.2% (65–74 to 95+ years). These results are supported by the multivariate analyses. The terminal hospital stay was up to 3 days in 32.6%. This length did not differ by dementia status. ConclusionsGermany has a high proportion of NHR in-hospital deaths. Surprisingly, we found no differences in these figures between NHR with and without dementia, although predictors for in-hospital death seem to differ between these groups.