This data set specification covers palliative care provided in community settings only. This includes: private residences—which includes caravans, mobile homes, houseboats or units in a retirement village;
residential aged care settings—which include high and low care residential aged care facilities but not units in a retirement village;
other residential settings—which include residential facilities other than aged care facilities, prisons, or community living environments including group homes; and
non-residential settings—which include day respite centres, day centres, palliative care day centres, community health centres and outpatient departments (hospitals/hospices).
It does not include hospital and hospice inpatient settings, although it is acknowledged that service providers may provide palliative care in these settings. Definitions of 'episode of care' may vary within the palliative care context. The definition used in this dataset states an episode of care may span more than one treatment setting. The term 'period of community-based palliative care' may be used in collection guidelines for this data set however, ‘episode of care’ is the term used for these metadata items in this data set. A different methodology applies to the definition of episode of care used by the Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) as one which commences on the day of first face-to-face contact after being accepted for care and finishes whenever the setting of care changes. |