The Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Key Performance Indicators (PC EOLC KPIs) will monitor and inform the activities of Australian Government and state and territory funded services that provide palliative care and end-of-life care to Australians of all ages with life-limiting health conditions. The purpose of this indicator set is to drive palliative care practice improvement, including informing the monitoring and evaluation of the National Palliative Care Strategy 2018 (DoH 2019). The PC EOLC KPIs are intended to: - include the range of settings in which palliative care and end-of-life care is delivered
- indicate the major issues pertaining to people with life-limiting health conditions
- reveal changes in outcomes that may be driven by the quality of care that services provide to people with life-limiting health conditions
- align with broader national reporting on the health system through the Australian Health Performance Framework.
The PC EOLC KPIs are designed to be both an achievable and aspirational set of performance indicators. The list of indicators and the availability of data and metadata for each indicator is summarised in the following table. Indicator name | Data and metadata available | Specialist palliative care workforce: - PI 01a: Number of health practitioners in specialist palliative care workforce - PI01b: Full time equivalent employed specialist palliative care workforce, per 100,000 population | Yes | PI 02: Average length of palliative care inpatient stay | Yes | PI 03: Proportion of episodes in which patients commence palliative care within 2 days of being ready for care | Yes | PI 04: Proportion of unstable palliative care phases that last 3 days or less | Yes | Change in symptoms and problems: - PI 05a: Proportion of palliative care phases in which patient pain severity remains absent/mild (clinician-rated) - PI 05b: Proportion of palliative care phases with improvement in patient pain severity, from moderate/severe to absent/mild at the end of the phase (clinician-rated) - PI 05c: Proportion of palliative care phases in which patient distress from pain remains absent/mild (patient-rated) - PI 05d: Proportion of palliative care phases with improvement in patient distress from pain, from moderate/severe to absent/mild at the end of the phase (patient-rated) - PI 05e: Proportion of palliative care phases in which patient distress from fatigue remains absent/mild (patient-rated) - PI 05f: Proportion of palliative care phases with improvement in patient distress from fatigue, from moderate/severe to absent/mild at the end of the phase (patient-rated) - PI 05g: Proportion of palliative care phases in which patient distress from breathing problems remains absent/mild (patient-rated) - PI 05h: Proportion of palliative care phases with improvement in patient distress from breathing problems, from moderate/severe to absent/mild at the end of the phase (patient-rated) - PI 05i: Proportion of palliative care phases in which family and/or carer problems remain absent/mild (clinician-rated) - PI 05j: Proportion of palliative care phases with improvement in family and/or carer problems, from moderate/severe to absent/mild at the end of the phase (clinician-rated) | Yes | PI 06: Experience of service reported by consumers of palliative care services | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 07: Number of palliative care services that meet relevant standards | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 08: Proportion of the population receiving specialist palliative care | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 09: Proportion of palliative care patients who were cared for in their location of preference during their last month of life | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 10: Recurrent expenditure on state and territory palliative care services | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 11: Principal illnesses most frequently leading to palliative care | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 12: Average number of emergency department presentations within 6 months of death | Not yet specified for national reporting | PI 13: Percentage of Australians with advance care planning documents | Not yet specified for national reporting |
Current national data collections are focused predominantly on specialised palliative care services. The indicator set will be progressively updated and may be expanded as more data sources become available for indicator development. | 
