Documentation of Palliative and End-of-Life Care Process Measures Among Young Adults Who Died of Cancer: A Natural Language Processing Approach

Few studies have investigated palliative and end-of-life care processes among young adults (YAs), aged 18-34 years, who died of cancer. This retrospective study used a natural language processing algorithm to identify documentation and timing of four process measures in YA cancer decedents' medical records: palliative care involvement, discussions of goals of care, code status, and hospice. Among 2878 YAs, 138 had a recorded date of death. In this group, 54.3% had at least one process measure documented early (31-180 days before death), 18.0% had only late documentation of process measures (0-30 days), and 27.5% had none documented.