Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan 2;7(1):4.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare7010004.

Monitoring the Italian Home Palliative Care Services

Gianlorenzo Scaccabarozzi  1 , Pietro Giorgio Lovaglio  2 , Fabrizio Limonta  3 , Carlo Peruselli  4 , Mariadonata Bellentani  5 , Matteo Crippa  6
Affiliations

Monitoring the Italian Home Palliative Care Services

Gianlorenzo Scaccabarozzi et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Background: In Italy, there currently is a lack of reliable and consistent data on home palliative care provided to people near death.

Objectives: Monitoring the activities of the Italian Home Palliative Care Services, according to the 2014 national data collection program entitled "Observatory of Best Practices in Palliative Care" and providing process/outcome measures on a subsample (Best Practice Panel), on regulatory standards and on complete/reliable activity data.

Design: A data collection web portal using two voluntary internet-based questionnaires in order to retrospectively identify the main care activity data provided within the year 2013 by Home care units. In the Best Practice Panel and International best practices, eligibility and quality measures refer to the national standards of the NL 38/2010. Setting/Subject: Home Palliative Care Services (HPCSs) that provided care from January to December 2013.

Results: 118 Home care units were monitored, globally accounting for 40,955 assisted patients within the year 2013 (38,384 cancer patients); 56 (47.5% of 118) were admitted in the Best Practice Panel. Non-cancer (5%) and pediatric (0.4%) patients represented negligible percentages of frail care patients, and a majority of patients died at home (respectively nearly 75% and 80% of cancer and non-cancer patients).

Conclusion: The study demonstrated the feasibility of the collection of certified data from Home care services through a web-based system. Only 80% of the facilities met the requirements provided by the Italian NL 38/2010. Moreover, the extension of the palliative care services provided to frail non-cancer and pediatric patients, affected by complex and advanced chronic conditions, is still inadequate in Italy.

Keywords: Italian National Observatory; best practices; home palliative care units; palliative care; quality of the care.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare not to have any conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
HPCSs enrolled in the study by Italian province (colored areas) and number of inhabitants (thousands) per HPCS in each province in 2013 (Regions-bold contours).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Boxplot of K1 (N = assisted cancer patients × full-time palliative care physician) and K2 (N = assisted cancer patients × full-time palliative care nurse): HPCS IDs labeled as extreme outliers (outside the outer fences).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Regression plot and confidence interval of individual predictions (Stage 4). Labeled as HPCS IDs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. ISTAT-Italian Institute of Statistics . Leading Causes of Death in Italy in 2012. Istat Press; Rome, Italy: 2014.
    1. Rosenwax L.K., McNamara B., Blackmore A.M., Holman C.D.J. Estimating the size of a potential palliative care population. Palliat. Med. 2005;19:556–562. doi: 10.1191/0269216305pm1067oa. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Gomez-Batiste X., Martinez-Munoz M., Blay C., Jose E., Joan C.C., Albert L. Identifying needs and improving palliative care of chronically-ill patients: A community-oriented, population-based, public-health approach. Curr. Opin. Support. Palliat. Care. 2012;6:371–378. doi: 10.1097/SPC.0b013e328356aaed. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Murtagh F.E., Bausewein C., Verne J., Groeneveld E.I., Kaloki Y.E., Higginson I.J. How many people need palliative care? A study developing and comparing methods for population-based estimates. Palliat. Med. 2014;28:49–58. doi: 10.1177/0269216313489367. - DOI - PubMed
    1. NCP-National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care Clinical Practice Guidelines for quality palliative care, executive summary. J. Palliat. Med. 2004;7:611–627. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2004.7.611. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources