Admitted patient palliative care

This chapter provides information related to palliative care-related hospitalisations and explores the distribution and characteristics of these hospitalisations between 2015–16 to 2023–24. Further information about how palliative care-related hospitalisations are identified through admitted patient care is provided in Box 1 and the Data source.

The information in this chapter was last updated in October 2025.

Box 1: Identifying palliative care in admitted patient care data

This chapter only covers care for admitted patients, who undergo a formal admission process in public or private hospitals to receive treatment and/or care. It focuses on Palliative care-related hospitalisations where palliative care was provided during all or part of the episode of care. These hospitalisations are divided into 2 groups depending on how they are identified in the hospital data:

For more information, see Data source.

 

Key points

In 2023–24, among the 107,500 palliative care-related hospitalisations:

  • 57,800 were for primary palliative care and 49,700 for other palliative care, equating to 21 and 18 per 10,000 population, respectively
  • nearly 3 in 5 (59%) hospitalisations were for people aged 75 and over with a median admission age of 77
  • the average length of stay was nearly double the length of stay for hospitalisations for all reasons – 11 days compared to 5.6 days
  • 1 in 2 (48%) primary palliative care hospitalisations had a principal diagnosis of cancer compared with 30% for other palliative care hospitalisations
  • more than half (55%) of hospitalisations ended with the patient dying in hospital, with this more prevalent for primary than other palliative care hospitalisations (69% and 40%, respectively).

Between 2015–16 and 2023–24, palliative care-related hospitalisations increased at an annual rate of 4.9%, double that of hospitalisations for all reasons (2.3%).

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