The palliative care home support program

Introduction:  Surveys consistently show that up to three-quarters of Australians would prefer to die at home. The local reality is very different-only 16% of Australians with a life limiting illness actually die at home.
 
Aims: The HammondCare consortium comprising HammondCare, Sacred Heart Health Service and Calvary Health Care Sydney Ltd proposes to address this end of life care gap by providing a responsive, collaborative service to increase opportunities for people to die at home, when that is their wish.
 
Approach:  The consortium seeks to build on existing community capacity and work with Local Health Districts (LHDs) GPs, Community Nurses and Specialist Palliative Care teams to improve opportunities for the patient to die at home.
 
The program consists of three main strategies:

1. The provision of end of life care packages for up to 48hours of specialised supportive care in the home, day or night, provided by specially trained community care workers, who work as part of existing Specialist Palliative Care multidisciplinary teams.
2. A state wide education program to support primary health professionals in their care of patients at the end of life.
3. Independent evaluation of the quality and outcomes of education and service provision.

Outcomes: Training for care workers has now been delivered to two regions and forty care workers and the program will gradually commence in the remaining five participating LHDs during early 2014.
 
Discussion:  Initial collaboration with participating LHDs, Specialist Palliative Care teams, care workers and care worker employers has laid the foundation for a program that will improve care and connections to people at the end of life who wish to remain in their own homes. In addition it is envisioned that there will be a reduction in costly and potentially distressing acute hospital admissions at the end of life.