Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?

Publication

Release Date: 09 Jun 2021

Topic: Aged care

AIHW

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2021) Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 19 April 2024.

APA

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2021). Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?. Canberra: AIHW.

MLA

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?. AIHW, 2021.

Vancouver

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?. Canberra: AIHW; 2021.

Harvard

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2021, Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?, AIHW, Canberra.

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This report uses linked data to determine an indicative setting at death (whether people had used hospital, residential aged care or other aged care near death). In particular, aged care plays a considerable role in caring for people at the end of their lives—and the older people are, the more likely they are to be living in residential aged care when they die.

ISBN: 978-1-76054-841-4
Cat. no: AGE 106
Pages: 12

Findings from this report:

For people aged 65 and over, hospital was the most common place of death (50%), followed by residential aged care (36%)
Of older people who were living in residential aged care in the week before death, 79% died in residential aged care
For people aged 85 and over, residential aged care was the most common place of death (50%), followed by hospital (40%)
Of older people not living in residential aged care in the week before death, 7 in 10 (71%) died in hospital

Summary

Knowing where people die is an important first step towards planning and delivering palliative care, aged care and hospital services that support people’s needs and preferences towards the end of life. In this way, where people die can be considered as one marker for their end-of-life care needs.

However, in isolation, no data source currently captures full information on where people die. By bringing multiple data sources together in a linked data set, it is possible to determine whether people had used hospital, residential aged care or other aged care near death and thus determine an indicative setting at death. This report presents one method for identifying where people die to inform future discussions on this important topic.

Interfaces between aged care and health systems in Australia—where do older Australians die?

Citation

AIHW

APA

MLA

Vancouver

Harvard

Summary

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