Specialist Palliative Care in Aged Care

The Metro North SPACE (Specialist Palliative Care in Aged Care) project aims to improve access to specialist palliative care and improve palliative and end-of-life care to residents of aged care facilities, in their place of choosing and avoid unnecessary hospitalisation.

This initiative comes under the Australian Government’s Better Quality of Care – Comprehensive Palliative Care in Aged Care Measure to support older persons living in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs).  The model supports the provision of best practice specialist palliative care in line with:

• The National Palliative Care Strategy 2018
• The Aged Care Quality Standards.

The project goals are to:

• improve palliative and end-of-life care for older people living in residential aged care
• further enable people to die where they want, supported by enhanced aged care services.

The Metro North SPACE project is intended to support people at end-of-life residing in Residential Aged Care Facilities within the Metro North Health catchment area by:

• Providing specialist palliative care access for residents in Residential Aged Care Facilities approaching end-of-life, with complex physical or psychosocial systems that are unable to be managed under the usual care approaches
• Introducing “Palliative Care Needs Rounds” into RACFs to facilitate capability and capacity building within their staff.

Assistance may be sought for residents of aged care facilities for the following:

• Complex symptom management
• Advice from palliative care consultants
• Family Distress/Advance Care Planning.

Metro North SPACE understands that there is a tremendous amount of generalist palliative care already being provided by the Residential Aged Care Facilities through the nursing staff and general practitioners.

The aim of this service is to support and enhance the care already being given through direct and indirect support of the clinicians already providing this care. The governance of the resident’s care will remain with the current providers – the resident’s GPs and RACF nursing staff.

GP permission must be obtained prior to the Specialist Palliative Care team becoming involved.

How to access this service

The service can be accessed through the

Residential Aged Care District Assessment and Referral Service (RADAR) or via referral through the Central Patient Intake Unit by visiting (GPs) https://metronorth.health.qld.gov.au/specialist_service/refer-your-patient

Forward completed referrals to the Central Referral Unit.

1300 658 252
Fax: 3360 4822

Email: Central_Referral_Unit@health.qld.gov.au