Table 2.
Quality of care indicators comparing all care and care delivered in community settings and hospitals in the region with fully developed palliative care versus the region with less developed palliative care.
| Region |
p-value | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Fully developed | Less developed | ||
| Patients (%) lacking | |||
| Oral health assessment | |||
| All (N = 5735 resp 3245) | 25.1 | 24.8 | 0.71 |
| Community settings (N = 2516 resp 1824) | 25.5 | 22.5 | 0.02 |
| Hospitalsa (N = 1509 resp 1175) | 33.4 | 28.4 | <0.01 |
| End-of-life conversation | |||
| All (N = 5730 resp 3223) | 38.7 | 43.2 | <0.01 |
| Community settings (N = 2488 resp 1841) | 44.9 | 38.1 | <0.01 |
| Hospitalsa (N = 1520 resp 1137) | 64.5 | 59.0 | <0.01 |
| Pain assessment | |||
| All (N = 5905 resp 3386) | 57.6 | 59.5 | 0.08 |
| Community settings (N = 2623 resp 1915) | 63.6 | 56.3 | <0.01 |
| Hospitalsa (N = 1568 resp 1279) | 84.9 | 66.6 | <0.01 |
| Companionship at death | |||
| All (N = 6402 resp 3703) | 16.5 | 14.9 | 0.03 |
| Community settings (N = 2727 resp 2025) | 12.5 | 9.4 | <0.01 |
| Hospitalsa (N = 1944 resp 1415) | 24.6 | 24.0 | 0.71 |
| Patients (%) having | |||
| Artificial nutrition/fluid in the last 24 hb | |||
| All (N = 6336 resp 3652) | 15.3 | 17.7 | <0.01 |
| Community settings (N = 2722 resp 2016) | 1.6 | 3.3 | <0.01 |
| Hospitalsa (N = 1883 resp 1373) | 41.6 | 39.8 | 0.30 |
SRPC: Swedish Register of Palliative Care.
Note that number of patients refer to the minimum number of patients for each region. Due to differently missing data for the different indicators, the number of included patients for the developed region ranges up to N = 6402 and for the less developed region up to N = 3703. Categorization ‘All’ refers to all deaths in the respective region reported to the SRPC, irrespective of place of death.
p-values result from chi-square tests.
Excluding specialized palliative care units.
Artificial nutrition/fluid is usually not available in community-based settings.