The heavier the person, the lower the chance of getting hospice care or dying at home, study finds
A new study done at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine draws this conclusion from an in-depth analysis of records from more than 5,600 senior citizens taking part in a long-term health study. The researchers looked at how the seniors' body mass index or BMI -- a measure of obesity -- related to end-of-life measures such as their use of hospice services, which provide supportive care to people in their final months of life. The higher someone's BMI, the less likely they were to enter hospice at all, the researchers found. And for those seniors who did use hospice services at the end of their lives, people with obesity spent fewer days in hospice than those with lower BMIs. About 60 percent of the seniors in the study died at home -- an experience that most Americans say they would choose for their own deaths. But that percentage dropped as BMI rose. The one thing that was higher amo...