What this study adds
death
DISEASE
Studying the effects of advance care planning in a cohort of patients with advanced disease is challenging, but given the interest in the implementation of advance care planning programmes and the limited available knowledge about the effects in such cohorts, it is essential to study these effects and to provide much needed insight. While costs should not be the primary consideration in offering advance care planning, cost studies about advance care planning provide essential additional information for healthcare organisations who consider implementation of advance care planning programmes. We found lower costs of care in the intervention group, but established that this was mainly explained by differences in patient characteristics between the groups.We recommend that future research prospectively monitors the use of care during the full trajectory from advance care planning conversations until the patient’s death to be able to measure the full impact of advance care planning on costs of hospital care. Further, future research might apply a broader perspective and include, for instance, nursing and home care.