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P-192 Using data insights on emergency hospital attendance to quantify the unmet need for patients at the end of life

bmjspcare · 2025-11-21 · canonical JSON source

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Background The hospice supports an estimated population of 500,000 people. Modelling projected need suggests that 3,750 patients in the area could benefit from palliative and end of life care (Etkind, Bone, Gomes, et al. BMC Med. 2017 May 18;15(1):102). We currently care for approximately 1,200 patients per year. Connected Care brings together data and information from healthcare partners and ‘Systems Insights’ is a platform which analyses the data to create population datasets.Aim Feedback from primary care and acute hospitals suggests that the unmet need for dying people is reflected in inappropriate emergency department attendance. Systems Insights can provide data to identify patients who are risk of ED attendance at the end of life to help the hospice target our services towards those who need us.Methods A search strategy was developed using eligibility for advance care planning as a marker of need for end of life care. This was then correlated with ED attendance in one year.Results 1,480 patients who had an advance care plan attended ED compared with 1,093 patients who were eligible but did not have an advance care plan. Patients with an advance care plan attended more frequently (78 attendances versus 71 attendances per 1,000 population). Analysis of the advance care plan cohort identified two different populations based on geography. Area 1 was a population of older females with multiple comorbidities. Area 2 was an ethnically diverse population living in greater deprivation.Conclusions System Insights data has supported the hospice to better understand the demographics and clinical needs of the population we serve. The information enables us to tailor our services to meet the population needs rather than deliver one universal model. The next step is to work with system partners to deliver targeted models of care which widen access to palliative and end of life care and help us reach more patients.