Source data: Palliative care outcomes tables (192KB XLSX)
The average age for patients across all episodes reported to PCOC during 2019 was 73.5, with a median age of 75.0. Males accounted for 52.7% (33,863) of episodes.
In 2019, 1.6% (712) of PCOC palliative care patients were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, compared with an estimated 3.3% of the general population in 2016 (ABS 2018a).
Preferred language and country of birth
In 2019, English was reported as the preferred language by 89.6% of PCOC patients. This was followed by Italian (1.9%), Greek (1.5%) and Chinese languages (1.4%). A different distribution of language spoken at home was observed in the 2016 Australian Census (ABS 2017), where 72.7% of people were recorded as speaking English at home, followed by people who mainly spoke Chinese languages (4.0%), Arabic (1.4%) and Vietnamese (1.2%).
The main country of birth of PCOC patients was Australia (63.8%), followed by England (7.0%), Italy (4.0%) and Greece (2.2%).
Diagnosis
In 2019, around 3 in 4 episodes (74.3%) involved a cancer diagnosis—the 3 most frequently recorded diagnoses were lung cancer (15.1%), colorectal (bowel) cancer (7.9%) and other gastro-intestinal cancers (6.9%)—a similar result to that observed in 2017 and 2018.
Socioeconomic status
Compared to the distribution of the Australian population across socioeconomic status groups (i.e. 20% of the population per socioeconomic quintile or level (ABS 2018b)), PCOC episodes were over-represented, proportionally, towards those living in areas classified as having the least socioeconomic disadvantage. In 2019, the highest proportion of episodes, over one quarter (27.6%), was seen for those patients living in areas classified as having the least socioeconomic disadvantage, with this group proportionally over-represented in both inpatient and community settings. People living in areas classified as having the most socioeconomic disadvantage accounted for about 1 in 7 PCOC episodes (14.3%) (Figure PCOC.2).
Socioeconomic status described here uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics Index of Relative Socio-Economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) (ABS 2018b).