Quality indicators for palliative care for older people: An umbrella review

Apr 27, 2026

This episode features Amy Hutchinson (Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Centre for Healthcare Transformation, Faculty of Health, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).

 

What is already known on this topic?

• Quality indicators for palliative care have been extensively researched in different populations and settings.
• A comprehensive suite of palliative care quality indicators for older people is required to inform policy and practice.

 

What this paper adds

• This review identified 658 unique quality indicators for palliative care for older people of which 56 indicators required a person or proxy rating, 388 indicators could be derived from healthcare records, and 214 indicators related directly to service or organisational aspects.
• There was a clear lack of quality indicators which relate to the structures of care, demonstrating an underrepresentation of the influence of organisational processes in quality outcomes.
• Indicators often emphasised a biomedical approach, overlooking the psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual aspects essential to high-quality palliative care.

 

Implications for practice, theory or policy

• There is a need for a more refined suite of indicators to be tested across diverse cultural, geographic and healthcare settings.
• This refined suite can then be used by health and aged care services to assess the quality of care they provide and identify performance gaps to target in quality improvement initiatives.

 

Full paper available from:    

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02692163251403422

 

If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara Nwosu: 

[e-mail]