The Australian Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC), established in 2005, is a national palliative care outcomes and benchmarking program, using standardised validated clinical assessment tools. PCOC’s primary objective is to systematically improve palliative care patient outcomes, including pain and symptom control, and timely access to services when they are needed (see the Data Sources section for further details).
Downloads
PDF version of this section
Latest data tables
The information in this section was last updated in October 2021.
Key points
In 2020:
- One in 2 (52%) palliative care episodes recorded by PCOC occurred in community settings.
- Almost 3 in 4 (72%) palliative care episodes were for people with cancer.
- Patients receiving palliative care had a median age of 76 years.
- The vast majority (93%) of palliative care episodes commenced on the day the patient was ready for palliative care, or the day after.
- Around 90% of palliative care phases that started with absent/mild patient pain remained absent/mild at the end of the palliative care phase (89% for pain severity and 88% for distress from pain).
- Around 60% of palliative care phases that began with moderate/severe patient pain reduced to absent/mild by the end of the palliative care phase (62% for pain severity and 57% for distress from pain).
The information presented in this section refers to palliative care service data reported to PCOC for the 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020 period. Three levels of PCOC data items are presented here: patient-level, episode-level and phase-level care data (see Box PCOC.1).
As participation in PCOC is voluntary, the data presented in this section describe a subset of all palliative care services delivered in Australia. For further information about PCOC, refer to the Australian Health Services Research Institute's PCOC information page.
Box PCOC.1. Defining patients, episodes and phases
Patients: patients receiving palliative care from palliative care service providers that participate in PCOC.
Episode of care: a period of contact between a patient and a service where palliative care is provided in a single setting (such as hospital or community). Patients can have more than 1 episode of care when accessing palliative care services. Multiple episodes of care can occur if a patient’s care needs change, they no longer require palliative care, or they change settings. For example, if a patient receives care at home and then transitions to care in a hospital, this would be reflected as 2 separate episodes.
Phases: episodes of care are composed of phases. Palliative care phases, based on the clinical condition of the patient, are used to describe the care needs of patients and their families to indicate whether or not the current care plan meets these needs. The palliative care phase types are: stable, unstable, deteriorating and terminal.
Inpatient and community care
The information provided for palliative care episodes is categorised into 2 broad settings of care—inpatient and community. Inpatient episodes cover admissions to hospital or hospice. Community episodes are those that occur in the patient’s 'home’. For example, this may be in their private residence, aged care, mental health or disability residential service.
In 2020, 53,300 patients received palliative care from the 170 palliative care services participating in PCOC. There were 72,400 episodes of care reported to PCOC, equating to an average of 1.4 palliative care episodes per patient. The number of palliative care episodes was slightly higher in community settings (52% of all episodes) than in inpatient settings (see Table PCOC.1).
It should be noted that patients included in PCOC data may receive services within both the inpatient and community settings, and therefore may be counted in both service settings.
Patient characteristics
Age, sex, and Indigenous status
In 2020, the number of palliative care episodes increased steeply with age from age 45 onwards, as shown in Figure PCOC.1. People aged 65 and over accounted for over three-quarters of all episodes (77%) compared with 14% for those aged 55–64 and 6% for those aged 45–54. The median age of patients across all episodes was 76 years.
The age profile of patients in inpatient and community care settings were similar.
In 2020, males had slightly more episodes of palliative care than females, with males accounting for 52% of all episodes (Table PCOC.9).
In 2020, 936 patients identifying as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander received palliative care from palliative care services participating in PCOC (1.8% of all palliative care patients in PCOC; Table PCOC.10).