National palliative care measures

This measure is about ensuring that people with life-limiting illnesses receive effective care that minimises psychological and spiritual distress. People with life-limiting illnesses are likely to experience changing feelings as their illness progresses, so this measure looks at changes across palliative care phases. A palliative care phase is a clinically meaningful period in a patient's condition (stable, unstable, deteriorating, terminal). This measure uses clinician-reported data to assess the severity of problems related to patient psychological or spiritual wellbeing.

The desired outcome is that fewer people with life-limiting illnesses experience psychological or spiritual distress, meaning the measure will increase.

Objective area: Effective   Outcome area: Psychosocial wellbeing

Trends

In 2018, people with life-limiting illnesses experienced improved or maintained low levels of psychological or spiritual problems in 80.2% of palliative care phases (recorded in the PCOC data collection). This decreased slightly to 79.2% in 2022. This decrease occurred over the COVID-19 pandemic which may have impacted on how people were accessing and receiving palliative care services, and their outcomes during this period. Note, these findings should be interpreted with caution as the number of services participating in PCOC increased between 2018 and 2022 (see Data sources for more information).  

Figure 1.2.1: Proportion of palliative care phases for people with life-limiting illnesses for which psychological or spiritual problems improved or remained at a low level after intervention, 2018–2022

Characteristics

In 2022, the proportion of palliative care phases for which psychological or spiritual problems improved or remained at a low level after intervention, varied by some characteristics and not others. Note, these findings should be interpreted with caution as the representativeness of the PCOC data collection by different demographic characteristics is unknown (see Data sources for more information).

Figure 1.2.2 highlights that the proportion of palliative care phases for which psychological or spiritual problems improved or remained at a low level over the phase was:

• similar for males (79.3%) and females (79.2%)
• steadily increasing with age from age group 25–34 (74.0%) to 85 and over (84.2%)
• higher among people with non-malignant diagnoses (82.7%) than malignant diagnoses (77.9%)
• similar for people from varying socioeconomic areas (ranging from 78.4% to 79.9%), and people from varying remoteness areas (ranging from 77.0% to 80.6%)
• higher among people in inpatient settings (83.2%) than community settings (75.7%)
• highest when only looking at terminal phases (83.7%) and lowest when only looking at stable phases (73.2%)
• highest for phases where psychological or spiritual problems were mild at phase start (88.4%) and lowest where psychological or spiritual problems were moderate at phase start (63.3%).

Figure 1.2.2: Proportion of palliative care phases for people with life-limiting illnesses for which psychological or spiritual problems improved or remained at a low level after intervention, by selected characteristics, 2022