Dec 15, 2017
This episode features Anna Bone (Cicely Saunders Institute
of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King’s College
London). This study aimed to project where people will
die from 2015 to 2040 across all care settings in England and
Wales.
The study was a population-based trend analysis and projections
using simple linear modelling. All deaths (2004–2014) from
death registration data and predicted deaths (2015–2040) from
official population forecasts in England and Wales. Age- and
gender-specific proportions of deaths in hospital, care home, home,
hospice and ‘other’ were applied to numbers of expected future
deaths.
The study demonstrated that if current trends continue,
the number of deaths in care homes and homes will increase by
108.1% and 88.6%, with care home the most common place of
death by 2040. If care home capacity does not expand and additional
deaths occur in hospital, hospital deaths will start rising by
2023. Due to increasing demand, in order to sustain
current trends, end-of-life care provision in care homes and the
community needs to double by 2040. An infrastructure across care
settings that supports rising annual deaths is urgently
needed; otherwise, hospital deaths will increase.Full paper
available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269216317734435