ArticleBMJ supportive & palliative care2020
Primary palliative care for older people in three European countries: a mortality follow-back quality study.
Article in BMJ supportive & palliative care, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Geographic variations in place of death and palliative care utilisation in the last three months of life in high-income countries: a systematic review.BMC palliative care · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Health and wellbeing status of the long-lived individuals of the Spanish LONGECYL cross-sectional study.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2024Article
- An online international comparison of palliative care identification in primary care using the Surprise Question.Palliative medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Primary care service use by end-of-life cancer patients: a nationwide population-based cohort study in the United Kingdom.BMC family practice · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMany older people with serious chronic illnesses experience complex health problems for which palliative care is indicated. We aimed to examine the quality of primary palliative care for people aged 65-84 years and those 85 years and older who died non-suddenly in three European countries.
methodsThis is a nationwide representative mortality follow-back study. General practitioners (GPs) belonging to epidemiological surveillance networks in Belgium (BE), Italy (IT) and Spain (ES) (2013-2015) registered weekly all deaths in their practices. We included deaths of people aged 65 and excluded sudden deaths judged by GPs. We applied a validated set of quality indicators.
resultsGPs registered 3496 deaths, of which 2329 were non-sudden (1126 aged 65-84, 1203 aged 85+). GPs in BE (reference category) reported higher scores than IT across almost all indicators. Differences with ES were not consistent. The score in BE particularly differed from IT on GP-patient communication (aged 65-84: 61% in BE vs 20% in IT (OR=0.12, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.20) aged 85+: 47% in BE vs 9% in IT (OR=0.09, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.16)). Between BE and ES, we identified a large difference in involvement of palliative care services (aged 65-84: 62% in BE vs 89% in ES (OR=4.81, 95% CI 2.41 to 9.61) aged 85+: 61% in BE vs 77% in ES (OR=3.1, 95% CI 1.71 to 5.53)).
conclusionsConsiderable country differences were identified in the quality of primary palliative care for older people. The data suggest room for improvement across all countries, particularly regarding pain measurement, GP-patient communication and multidisciplinary meetings.
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