Causes of death across different locations in the United States, 2015 to 2022

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the leading underlying causes of death across different locations in the USA from 2015 to 2022. Methods: Data on the leading underlying causes of death in each location of death—including medical outpatient facility or emergency room, medical inpatient facility, medical facility/dead on arrival, decedent’s home, hospice facility, and nursing home/long-term care—within the USA in individuals ≥18 years were extracted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database. Results: There were 22,236,700 deaths in our studied locations during the study period. Most deaths were in the decedents’ homes (34.5%), followed by inpatient medical facilities (31.8%). Malignant neoplasms were the leading cause of death in hospice facilities (32.8%–40.0%) and decedents’ homes (25.9%–31.5%), followed by heart disease. Heart disease was the most common cause of death in nursing homes/long-term care facilities (20.0%–23.6%), outpatient or emergency medical facilities (36.5%–44.7%), those dead on arrival at medical facilities (35.4%–40.3%), and inpatient medical facilities (14.3%–20.4%), with COVID-19 becoming the top cause of death in 2020 and 2021 in inpatient medical facilities. Conclusion: Overall, heart disease and malignant neoplasm were among the top three causes of death in all studied locations in our study period.