Use (≥1 encounters) of palliative care by end-of-life trajectory and sector in the last year of life
| Sector and setting of palliative care | End-of-life trajectory | |||
| Terminal illness (N=75 657) | Organ failure (N=72 363) | Frailty (N=67 513) | Overall* (N=235 159) | |
| Any palliative care in any setting (%) | 88.0 | 44.4 | 32.4 | 53.6 |
| Palliative care in an institutional care setting (%) | ||||
| Any institutional care† | 76.4 | 39.9 | 26.1 | 46.5 |
| Hospital inpatient | 75.6 | 39.4 | 25.2 | 45.9 |
| Complex continuing care | 6.0 | 1.4 | 1.1 | 2.7 |
| Long-term care | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.9 | 0.5 |
| Emergency room | 0.2 | <0.1 | <0.1 | 0.1 |
| Palliative care in a community care setting (%) | ||||
| Any community care† | 68.6 | 17.2 | 15.1 | 32.4 |
| Outpatient | 52.7 | 12.4 | 11.9 | 24.8 |
| Home care | 46.8 | 6.0 | 3.4 | 18.0 |
| Physician home visits | 14.8 | 2.5 | 1.9 | 6.2 |
| Among users of palliative care | ||||
| Mean days of institutional care | 16.54 | 12.02 | 10.71 | 14.10 |
| Mean days of community care | 32.08 | 10.74 | 9.68 | 21.59 |
| Initiation and intensity | ||||
| Median number of days before death to palliative care initiation (IQR) | 107 (33, 246) | 22 (6, 124) | 24 (6, 132) | 59 (13, 200) |
| Proportion of days following initiation in which palliative care was recorded (IQR) | 37% (0.18–0.67) | 25% (0.1–0.7) | 23% (0.1–0.64) | 33% (0.14–0.67) |
↵*Overall includes the sudden death (3%) and other (5%) trajectories which account for 8% of the total cohort. These are not individually shown here.
↵†Multiple services received on the same calendar day are counted as a single unit of ‘Any community care’ or ‘Any institutional care’. This avoids double counting palliative care in a single day and prevents decedents from having more service days than total days.