Palliative care services in Australia

In 2023–24, among the 1.0 million episode-level palliative care-related service events (Figure 2):

• 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, 7.1% from specialist practice)
• almost 3 in 4 (72%) were delivered off the hospital campus of the health care provider, and 1 in 4 (25%) were delivered on the hospital campus of the health care provider
• almost half were delivered by telephone (49%) or in person (46%).

Details on service events, including whether they were delivered to individuals or involved multiple health care providers, as well as information on funding sources, are available in Tables 3–4.

Figure 2: Characteristics of palliative care-related service events, 2023–24