Process Measures Of Palliative And End-Of-Life Care Among Young Adults Who Died From Cancer.

54Background: Timely delivery of palliative and end-of-life care (EOL) are essential components of high-quality cancer care. To date, however, few studies have examined process measures for EOL care in young adult (YA; ages 18-35 years) cancer decedents. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study using medical records of YA decedents who received cancer treatment at an academic cancer center between Jan. 1, 2012 and June 13, 2018. We used natural language processing (NLP) with validated key words to identify documentation of four process measures – palliative care involvement, and discussions of goals of care, code status, and hospice – from documented clinical encounters in the medical record within 6 months of death. Results: During this period 146/2,878 (5.1%) YA patients had a recorded death date and a first note at least 31 days prior to death. In this decedent cohort, the mean age was 28.2 years (SD=4.4) and 58.9% were men. The most common diagnoses were brain cancer (33.6%), sarcoma (19.9%), and b...