Association of socioeconomic status (SES) with use of specialist palliative care (SPC) among people who died with cancer before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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e18504 Background: Access to high-quality care, including SPC, is known to vary according to SES. The effect of SES on access to SPC during the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown. We measured the association of SES with SPC use in different care settings among people who died with cancer before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This retrospective, population-based cohort study included 173,915 adult patients who died with cancer from 16/3/2015 to 15/3/2020 (pre-pandemic), and from 16/3/2020 to 15/3/2021 (pandemic period), in Ontario, Canada; March 16, 2020 coincided with the start of pandemic-related hospital entrance screening. The primary outcome was access to SPC in the last 30 days of life, measured as the percentage of people with at least one SPC visit and the rate of visits/patient/30 days across home, hospital inpatient, and outpatient care settings. We used an interrupted time series analysis with segmented linear regression accounting for serial correlation to examine the immediate and gradual changes due to the pandemic. Analyses were stratified by SES, defined using area-level material deprivation quintiles (Q1, least to Q5, most deprived). Results: In total, 100,462 (57.8%) people received SPC in the last 30 days of life. The access to SPC increased steadily by 0.13% per 30 days over the pre-pandemic period ( P<0.001), with a drop of 5.34% at the start of pandemic ( P<0.001) and a trend increase of 0.19% during the pandemic period ( P = 0.10). The table shows study outcomes by care setting and SES. At baseline, patients in Q5 (vs Q1) had lower rates of SPC home visits, while rates of inpatient visits and outpatient visits were similar. Pre-pandemic for Q1 and Q5, inpatient visits were decreasing, outpatient visits were increasing, and home visits were stable. For both Q1 and Q5, there was an immediate decrease in home visits and increase in outpatient visits at pandemic onset, followed by a recovery in home visits; trends for inpatient and outpatient visits were unchanged. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic led to an immediate decrease in access to SPC among people who died with cancer, particularly for home visits. SES was significantly associated with access to home visits, both before and during the pandemic. [Table: see text]
