. 2019 Dec 23;23(1):90–96. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2019.0056

Table 1.

Patient, County, and Hospice Use Characteristics among Medicare Decedents by State

	Total	North Carolina	South Carolina
Hospice beneficiaries	43,737	27,117	16,620
Counties, N	146	100	46
HRRs, N	14	9	5
	% or Mean (SD)	% or Mean (SD)	% or Mean (SD)
Patient characteristics
Female	59.3	59.3	59.4
Black	15.3	13.6	17.9
Primary diagnosis^a
Cancer	27.3	29.5	23.8
Circulatory disease	32.4	31.6	33.6
Mental disorder	4.9	4.3	5.9
Respiratory illness	18.4	18.3	18.5
Other	25.5	24.6	26.8
County characteristics^b
Poverty rate	18.3	18.1	18.7
Four-year college degree	25.4	25.8	24.8
Uninsured	18.5	18.5	18.6
Hospice providers	1.2 (1.8)	0.8 (0.7)	2.1 (2.9)
Hospice use
Death service ratio^c	42.9	42.1	44.6
Hospice payment^a (thousands, $)	12.1 (14.5)	10.9 (13.6)	13.9 (15.6)
Hospice days^a	77.9 (102.0)	68.4 (95.2)	92.8 (110.3)

^{^a}

Values displayed are per beneficiary averages for patients who used at least one day of hospice in calendar year 2014.

^{^b}

Percentages displayed are beneficiary-weighted averages of county-level percentages.

^{^c}

Death Service Ratio is defined as the ratio of the number of decedents in 2014 who used at least one day of hospice to the total number of decedents in 2014.

HRRs, hospital referral regions; SD, standard deviation.