National palliative care measures

This measure is about ensuring that people in need of palliative care receive it.  Currently, it is not possible to measure this directly and so a proxy measure is reported, which focuses on the number of practitioners in the specialist palliative care workforce. This proxy measure was chosen because achieving a functional and sustainable palliative care workforce is necessary to ensuring the needs of those requiring specialist palliative care are met.

Note, due to data availability only the specialist palliative care workforce is captured.

The desired outcome is an increase in the number of specialist palliative care practitioners per 100,000 population.  

Objective area: Accessible    Outcome area: Equitable

Trends

In 2018, there was 1.0 palliative medicine physician and 12.2 palliative care nurses per 100,000 population (Figure 5.1.1). This increased to 1.2 palliative medicine physicians and 12.5 palliative care nurses per 100,000 population in 2022. This increase was only statistically significant for palliative medicine physicians.    

Figure 5.1.1: Number of health practitioners in specialist palliative care workforce per 100,000 population, 2018–2022

Characteristics

Figure 5.1.2 highlights that the rate of employed palliative medicine physicians and palliative care nurses in 2022 varied by a range of characteristics:

• The highest rate (FTE per 100,000 population) of palliative medicine physicians was in Tasmania (1.8 per 100,000 population) and palliative care nurses was in the Northern Territory (16.9 per 100,000 population).
• The rate of palliative medicine physicians decreased as remoteness increased – Major Cities (1.3 per 100,000 population) had the highest rate and Outer Regional had the lowest rate (0.6 per 100,000 population). For palliative care nurses, the highest rate was in Inner Regional areas (14.3 per 100,000 population) and the lowest was in Remote and Very remote (5.4 per 100,000 population).
• Most palliative medicine physicians and palliative care nurses worked in hospital settings (0.8 FTE per 100,000 population and 6.5 FTE per 100,000 population respectively).

Figure 5.1.2: Number of health practitioners in specialist palliative care workforce per 100,000 population, by selected characteristics, 2022