Achieving needs-based end-of-life services: A prospective, longitudinal study of pathways for advanced cancer patients. A pilot study.

Project dates:
Commenced: 2009
Completed: 2010

This pilot study built on our on-going efforts to provide data to inform the planning and delivery of palliative care services, thereby reducing variations in access to and quality of care and ensuring the level of care provided matches patient needs.  The overarching aim was to test methods to determine how patients with advanced cancer interact with health services – particularly those associated with meeting health and supportive care needs at the end of life.  Collection and analysis of these data are necessary for planning future services to ensure patients with advanced cancer have equitable access to palliative care services as needed.

Data were collected from Queensland Health administrative datasets [HBCIS; EDIS] and medical charts (e.g., inpatient separations and transfers and emergency department presentations and related information), and directly from patients (experiences of the illness and use of health services).

Project outcomes:

This study found that the study methods (recruitment of patients who were nearing the end of their lives, follow up processes and the extraction of data from the above-mentioned health administrative datasets) were feasible. The methods adopted in this pilot study avoided some of the limitations of previous research in this field (that is of being retrospective and not capturing patient’s supportive care needs).