National palliative care measures

This measure is about ensuring that people with life-limiting illnesses receive effective care that minimises avoidable physical discomfort. Physical symptoms change across the illness trajectory, in response this measure looks at improvements 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 patient-reported data to assess the level of patient distress related to pain.

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

Objective area: Effective    Outcome area: Physical wellbeing

Trends

In 2018, people with life-limiting illnesses reported that their distress related to pain improved or remained at a low level in 71.1% of palliative care phases (recorded in the PCOC data collection). This has declined slightly over the 6 years to 70.6% in 2024 (Figure 1.1.1). Note, these findings should be interpreted with caution as the number of services participating in PCOC increased between 2018 and 2024.   

Characteristics

In 2024, the proportion of palliative care phases for which distress related to pain 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 across different demographic characteristics is unknown (see Data sources for more information).

Figure 1.1.2 highlights that the proportion of palliative care phases where the distress related to pain improved or remained at a low level over the phase was:

• Similar for males (70.4%) and females (70.8%).
• Steadily increasing with age from age group 45–54 (65.9%) to 85 and over (75.7%). It is important to note that the younger age groups had substantially smaller denominators compared with the older age groups.
• Higher among people with non-cancerous diagnoses (77.6%) than cancer diagnoses (67.8%).
• Similar for people living in areas of varying disadvantage (ranging from 69.4% to 71.3% in areas of most and least disadvantage respectively).  
• Highest among people from Remote areas (73.1%) and lowest among people from Inner regional areas (68.2%). 
• Higher among people in inpatient settings (74.6%) than community settings (67.2%). 
• Considerably lower for stable phases (61.7%) than for unstable, deteriorating, and terminal phases (ranging from 75.2% to 76.5%).
• Highest for phases where distress from pain was severe at phase start (81.5%) and lowest where distress from pain was moderate at phase start (69.1%). 

See Data tables for detailed notes.