Figure 1. Sample Selection.
Seven years of hospital discharge data included nearly 10 million admissions among nearly 4 million individual patients. After restricting the sample to in-state residents over age 21 with mutually exclusive cancer or non-cancer diagnoses, there were 207,523 high probability of dying admissions (a) and 120,372 terminal admissions (b). These two cohorts overlapped by 52,986 admissions.

