Palliative care services in Australia

Between 2015–16 and 2023–24, the number of palliative care-related hospitalisations increased by 46% (from 73,600 to 107,500), or from 31 to 40 hospitalisations per 10,000 population (Figure 3). This increase in hospitalisation rates was considerably smaller when adjusting for changes in the population age structure over this period (from 26 to 30 per 10,000), suggesting this increase is partly due to Australia’s ageing population.

Compared with hospitalisations for all reasons, the growth in palliative care-related hospitalisations has increased at twice the rate – average annual increase of 4.9% compared with 2.3% for hospitalisations for all reasons between 2015–16 and 2023–24.

Figure 3: Trends in palliative care-related hospitalisations, 2015–16 to 2023–24