PCOC national report on palliative care in Australia: January to June 2010

The Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) was established in mid-2005 and is funded under the National Palliative Care Program and is supported by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. It is a voluntary, quality initiative which aims to assist palliative care services to measure the standard and quality of care which is a stated goal of the National Palliative Care Strategy. The current PCOC dataset (Version 2) evolved after consultation with services and approval by PCOC's Scientific and Clinical Advisory Committee (SCAC) and went live on 1 July 2007. The dataset includes the clinical assessment tools - Phase of Care, PC Problem Severity Score (PCPSS), Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS), Australian-modified Karnofsky and RUG-ADL - which provide measures of quality and outcomes of care. PCOC provides analysis of each service's data and compares this to the national data. Four benchmark measures are now also routinely included in each report. For this PCOC Report 9, 97 palliative care services submitted data and 95 are included in this report. The reporting period is January to June 2010.