What is the impact of population ageing on the future provision of end-of-life care? Population-based projections of place of death - a podcast by SAGE Publications Ltd.

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

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