Palliative care services in Australia

Between 2015–16 and 2022–23 (Figure 5):

• The number of palliative care-related hospitalisations increased by 37% (from 73,600 to 101,000) – steeper than that observed for hospitalisations for all reasons (15% increase, or from 10.5 to 12.1 million). 
• The rate for palliative care-related hospitalisations increased from 31 to 38 per 10,000 population. When adjusting for changes in the population age structure over this period, the increase in the hospitalisation rates was considerably smaller – from 26 to 29 per 10,000 population. As such, the ageing of Australia’s population is contributing to the growth in palliative care-related hospitalisations.
• Among palliative care-related hospitalisations, the increase was steeper in other palliative care hospitalisations than in primary palliative care hospitalisations (48% compared with 29%, respectively). This pattern was observed both in public and private hospitals.
• In public hospitals, the average length of stay declined for primary palliative care overnight hospitalisations (from 10 days to 8.7 days). In contrast, the average length of stay remained relatively stable for primary palliative care hospitalisations in private hospitals (12–13 days), other palliative care (11–12 days in all hospitals), and hospitalisations for all reasons (5.3–5.7 days in all hospitals) over the same period.

Figure 5: Trends in palliative care-related hospitalisations, 2015–16 to 2022–23