Scottish Government

Improve end of life care

DESCRIPTION:

This indicator measures the percentage of the last 6 months of life which are spent at home or in a community setting.

SOURCE:

This indicator combines admissions data from the ISD; acute and community hospitals (SMR01), psychiatric hospitals (SMR04) and geriatric long stay facilities (SMR01 GLS) with deaths data from the National Records of Scotland. Patients who died where an external cause of death (e.g. unintentional injuries) is recorded on the death record are excluded; however patients who died where a fall is recorded are included in the indicator.

The figures are published on the ISD website in the publication Quality Outcome Measure 10: Percentage of last 6 months of life spent at home or in a community setting. Further information is available on the ISD website

Ideally, this measure would relate directly to the preferred place of care at the end of life. However, this can change over time and is, therefore, difficult to track. National data is not currently available at this level of detail so it is not possible to focus the measure directly on preferred place of death.

Instead, the proportion of time spent at home or in a community setting towards the end of life is used. These data are inferred by measuring the amount of time spent in a hospital setting during the last months of life (using the hospital admissions data) by dividing the actual number of bed days by the possible number of bed days and subtracting from 100% to estimate the time spent at home or in a community setting.

DEFINITIONS:

Community setting - Any residential setting outside of acute hospitals, community hospitals, psychiatric hospitals or geriatric long stay facilities eg home, care home, hospice.

Community Hospital - A local hospital, unit or centre providing an appropriate range and format of accessible health care facilities and resources.

BASELINE AND PAST TRENDS:

Comparable data is available on this indicator from 2010/11. Data using old methodology is available from 2005/06 but is not comparable to most recent years.

Finalised figures for 2015/16 have been used to compare to the last published figures (2014/15) on Scotland Performs site. 2016/17 are provisional and are likely to change next year, these have not been analysed.

Percentage of the last 6 months of life which are spent at home or in a community setting

CRITERIA FOR RECENT CHANGE ARROW:

This evaluation is based on: any difference in the percentage within +/- 0.5 percentage points of last year's figure suggests that the position is more likely to be maintaining than showing any change. An increase of 0.5 percentage points or more suggests the position is improving; whereas a decrease of 0.5 percentage points or more suggests the position is worsening. 

For information on general methodological approach, please click here.

FUTURE ISSUES OR REVIEWS:

There may be future revisions to the published data in accordance with ISD's revisions policy.

ASSOCIATED TARGET:

No associated target.