The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a wave of death across the U.S., but not all of these deaths have been equal. Unfortunately, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. immigrants have faced more brutal deaths than their non-immigrant counterparts. These disparities reflect long-standing disparities in the end-of-life care received among immigrant patients. Immigrants face unique barriers to ensuring they receive high quality care at the end of life, and the pandemic has highlighted these disparities. There is a critical need for public policy to address these systemic inequities and for providers to be made aware of them in order to ensure better patient care among dying immigrants.
Inequities in end-of-life care among immigrant patients exaggerated by the COVID-19 pandemic