Non-admitted patient palliative care
In this report, non-admitted patient service event refers to care (treatment or consultation) provided in the public hospital system without hospital admission (non-admitted patient). This chapter focuses on palliative care-related service events in 2023–24, highlighting their distribution and characteristics.
Due to changes in the scope of non-admitted care data collections, time series comparisons are not included. Details on how these palliative care-related service events are identified are provided in Box 1 and the Data source.
Palliative and end-of-life care is increasingly delivered outside inpatient settings. This chapter helps address a key gap in community-based services, as identified in the Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Information Priorities [PDF 892KB].
This chapter was last updated in October 2025.
Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Information Priorities [PDF 892KB]
People with life-limiting illnesses may receive care in various hospital settings, including wards, emergency departments, and outpatient clinics. This chapter focuses on outpatient care for non-admitted patients, who are not formally admitted and receive care through public hospitals, Local Hospital Networks, or other state-managed services listed under the National Health Reform Agreement (2011).
In this report, palliative care-related service events are where the primary clinical purpose or treatment goal is optimisation of the quality of life of a patient with an active and advanced life-limiting illness and must contain a recorded therapeutic or clinical content that result in a dated entry in the patient’s medical record. These non-admitted patient service events are grouped into three categories based on how they are identified in the data:
- Primary palliative care service events: care type of palliative care; includes medical consultations, allied health or clinical nurse specialist interventions, and treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy.
- Medical consultations for palliative care: Tier 2 non-admitted service type as palliative care in medical consultations. These consultations can be categorised as palliative, rehabilitation, or other care by care type.
- Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions for palliative care: Tier 2 non-admitted service type as palliative care in allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions. These interventions can be categorised as palliative or rehabilitation care by care type.
Note: there is no palliative care class in non-admitted services classified under procedures or diagnostic services. Palliative care service events can be identified as palliative care by care type, by Tier 2 clinics type, or both.
This chapter presents episode-level data on palliative care non-admitted patient service events, sourced from the National Non-admitted Patient Database (NNAP(el)D), which is part of the broader Non-admitted Patient Care Data Collections.
For more details, see Data source.
Key points
In 2023–24, among the 1.0 million palliative care-related service events recorded at episode-level:
- almost 3 in 4 (74%) were for people aged 65 and over
- over 1 in 3 referrals were from hospitals (24% was from the same hospital where service was provided and 13% from other hospitals) and almost 1 in 5 from medical consultations (12% from general practice and 7.1% from specialist practice)
- almost 3 in 4 (72%) were delivered off the hospital campus of the healthcare provider and 1 in 4 (25%) were delivered on the hospital campus of the health care provider.