There was a slight increase in the number of Medicare-subsidised palliative care medicine attendance and case conference services from 70,400 in 2023–24 to 78,100 in 2024–25, after several years of decline from a peak of 90,600 services in 2018-19. Despite this increase, the overall trend since 2018–19 still reflects an average annual decrease (2.4% per year). Conversely, for the number of people receiving these services, the trend since 2018-19 reflects an average annual increase of 0.6% per year.
A different pattern is observed for all services from palliative medicine specialists/physicians, which has been increasing steadily from 123,400 to 149,700 between 2018–19 and 2024–25 (average annual increase of 3.3%). These diverging patterns have resulted in declines in the proportion of attendance services from palliative medicine specialists/physicians that were claimed under palliative medicine attendances and case conferences from 74% to 52%. This may suggest that palliative medicine specialists/physicians are increasingly using other MBS items when attending to palliative care patients.
