Palliative Care Victoria calls for urgent overhaul as demand set to double

Palliative Care Victoria (PCV) has launched an urgent campaign, ‘Tomorrow’s Care Starts Today!’, calling for significant improvements to palliative care services across the state.

The organisation warns that a rapidly ageing population and increasing demand for services are creating a critical gap in support, with many Victorians dying without the care they need.

PCV chief Violet Platt said support is falling well behind demand.

“We’ve got a massive growth in the need for palliative care projected within the next seven years. By 2032 we’re going to need 50 per cent more palliative care and by 2050 it will be 100 per cent more,” she said

The growing numbers are attributed to an ageing population that is living longer with complex, chronic life-limiting conditions, a trend that medicine has helped facilitate.

Palliative care, often misunderstood as solely end-of-life support, is defined as care for anyone with a condition that is not curable. This can span years, not just the final days or months of life.

Ms Platt explained that, traditionally, people think about palliative care “when someone's on their deathbed, but it's so much more than that.”

“It's that whole journey, and it's about making the best of every day and doing what's important for you in that limited time.”

However, the current system is struggling to meet existing demand. Today, 62 Victorians will die without access to specialist palliative care.

Ms Platt noted that funding has never kept pace with demand, causing the “chasm between funding and service delivery” to grow.

Without immediate action, this gap will continue to widen. Apart from the need for people to be properly supported, investing in palliative care is economically sound, as it has been shown to reduce emergency department visits and shorten hospital stays.

A core tenet of PCV’s advocacy is the concept of “dying well,” which Ms Platt emphasised is deeply individual.

“What matters to me will be different to what matters to you,” she explained. To enable individuals to have choices regarding where, who, and how they receive care, they need to make advance care plans, so they can articulate their wishes “in the cold light of day” before emotional stress complicates decision-making.

This could include managing pain and fatigue to allow a person to enjoy a visit from grandchildren, or controlling nausea to enable a family meal.

“It's how can you live your best life for the time that you've got left,” Ms Platt said.

PCV’s three-year action plan

PCV’s campaign outlines three key calls to action for the Victorian Government:

Year One: Fund and Embed a Culture of Palliative Care
This priority aims to make palliative care “everyone's business.” Ms Platt said that while specialist palliative care teams are crucial, education is needed across all health professionals, including GPs, community nurses, and aged care staff.

She also stressed the importance of community support, saying, “let's talk more about death and dying let's not be scared of it. Let's understand that in the same way we make a birth plan we can make a death plan.”

This includes supporting carers, who often face massive burdens with few rest options.

Year Two: Improve Transitions of Care and Launch a Statewide Awareness Campaign
The current system is “fractured” and “siloed,” making it easy for people to get lost. Ms Platt noted that “far too many people know about palliative care too late,” with many only receiving specialist care in the last 15 days of life.

This leads to missed opportunities for individuals to live well for longer. A statewide awareness campaign, targeting both the community and health professionals, is crucial to improve understanding and referral pathways.

Year Three: Evaluate and Measure Progress
Currently, consistent and transparent data on palliative care access, outcomes, or service quality is not readily available. Ms Platt argued for a “dashboard for palliative care,” similar to data used for ambulance ramping, to track who is accessing care and how. She explained that current systems often fail to capture general palliative care provided by non-specialist staff, leading to an incomplete picture of service delivery.

Ms Platt knows the immense pressure on the Victorian health system.

“The system in Victoria is stretched to the point where there's not much more stretch,” and it largely runs on the “goodwill of health professionals.”

She added, “we're not asking for all the health funding, we're just asking for what we need to do the job well and to look after our workforce.”

Looking to the future, Ms Platt envisions a Victoria where conversations about death and dying are as normalised as mental health discussions are today.

She hopes for a system where people can “start the conversation, understand the wishes, and then make sure that we've got a system that can honour those wishes.”

This future would be supported by data demonstrating that people can die where they want, feel supported, and achieve what is important to them in their final years of life, with a knowledgable and well-supported workforce.