Epidemiol Health. 2022 Sep 21:e2022079. doi: 10.4178/epih.e2022079. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
The National Hospice and Palliative Care (NHPC) registry is a nationwide database that systematically collects information on terminally ill cancer patients receiving inpatient hospice care. From 2018 to 2020, a total of 47,911 patients were enrolled into the NHPC registry from the hospitals providing inpatient hospice care. The NHPC database mainly consists of sociodemographic and clinical information of the registered patients. Among these patients, approximately 75% of them were 60 years or older, and the ratio of males to females was 1:1.41. Lung, liver, colorectal, pancreas, and gastric cancer made up nearly 90% of the cancer sites among the registered patients. Upon first-ever admission to the hospice ward, around 80% of the patients were aware of their terminal illness. About half of the patients had mild pain at the time of the first-ever admission to the hospice ward and the duration of hospice care was 14 days (interquartile range [IQR] 6 days to 30 days) in 2019 and 2020. The NHPC registry is aimed to provide national statistics on inpatient hospice care to assist health policy making.
PMID:36177979 | DOI:10.4178/epih.e2022079
