A community program which allows people to die at home has had positive results in western NSW, but more needs to be done, according to Push for Palliative spokesperson Dr Yvonne McMaster.
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Figures released by HammondCare, to coincide with Palliative Care Week, revealed its Palliative Home Support packages had positive results since starting in 2013, with 64 per cent of patients able to fulfill their wish of dying at home.
But with only 52 people actually accessing the home palliative care packages in Western NSW, Dr McMaster, a retired palliative care doctor, said there was a lot more work to be done.
"In NSW, 47,000 people die in a year, and about half of them could have benefited from palliative care," Dr McMaster said.
"But only a tiny proportion actually do get palliative care.
"So if HammondCare is saying that a certain percentage of their patients died at home, then that's terrific, but it's not 64 per cent of the entire population. It's only a very select part of the population."
Across NSW, 400 people accessed HammondCare Palliative Home Support, with 76 per cent dying at home. According to Palliative Care Australia, 74 per cent of Australians want to die at home, but only 16 per cent do.
In the western NSW LHD, only 52 people accessed HammondCare Palliative Home Support, with 64 per cent dying at home.
Dr McMaster said it showed positive results for the program itself, but more funding was needed in the state's west, to ensure more people could access palliative care services.
"The HammondCare packages can really help people so much in the last few days of life," Dr McMaster said.
"However people approaching the end of life are in decline and needing the care of palliative care services for much longer than the last week or so of life.
"The success or failure of the end-of-life care packages depends to some extent on the capacity of each palliative care service, and the palliative care services in WNSWLHD have limited capacity. The packages actually add to the work of the already overstretched PC services. After all, these patients would otherwise probably be in hospital and would therefore not be needing further attention from the community palliative care service.
"Moreover, the palliative care teams sometimes don't have the capacity (enough staff) to become engaged with the patient early enough to build up trust and to be able to help patients and families to feel empowered to take the risk of staying at home.
"This problem is compounded by the mistaken view that palliative care is needed only in the last few days of life. In fact palliative care is beneficial from early on in the condition. By the last week or so of life the family is often so exhausted they just want the patient in hospital. In this connection it should be noted that delivering palliative care during the entire last year of life is where real savings (efficiencies) can be made."