Palliative care services in Australia

In 2022–23, among the 882,000 episode-level palliative care-related service events (Figure 3):

• 98% were delivered as individual sessions and the remaining 2% were delivered as group sessions for 2 or more patients
• 28% of referrals were from the same hospital where the service was provided, about 1 in 9 each were from general practice (12%) and other hospital (11%), and 5% were informal self-referral for an unplanned 'walk-in' service
• about 7 in 10 (68%) were delivered off the hospital campus of the healthcare provider (for example, in the person’s home), and 3 in 10 (30%) were delivered on the hospital campus of the healthcare provider
• about half were delivered in person (48%), and by telephone (47%)
• 98% were provided by a single healthcare provider and the remaining 2% were provided by multiple healthcare providers (either individually or jointly).

Figure 3: Characteristics of palliative care-related service events, 2022–23