The ability to estimate the number of people in a population that will need palliative care is obviously key to commissioning and planning services, and researchers at the Cicely Saunders Institute have been refining and comparing existing methods of estimating this need.
The researchers compared three different approaches, which use different combinations of mortality statistics, combined with symptom prevalence, disease prevalence or hospital service use.
Their refined method, which uses death registration data on both underlying and contributory causes, suggests that a minimum of 63% of all deaths may need palliative care – higher than previous estimates. The researchers found that they could give a reliable estimate of the population-based need for palliative care without needing to use symptom or hospital activity data – helping to simplify the process.
The authors of the study suggest that their method of estimating need can be used for local and regional populations using readily available data, enabling commissioners to estimate how many people need palliative care in their clinical commissioning group area and commission accordingly.
‘How many people need palliative care? A study developing and comparing methods for population-based estimates‘ by Murtagh FE et al, was published by Palliative Medicine online on 21 May 2013.
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