The overlap between a palliative approach to care and hospital-based palliative care consultancy care in an Australian public hospital

Objectives: To provide contemporary information regarding the Z51.5 use and overlap with hospital-based palliative care consultancy team care for an Australian public hospital.Methods: Linked dataset between inpatient and outpatient services on hospital decedents from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2023 at the Northern Hospital, Melbourne, Australia were collected. An overlap between Z51.5 episode and a hospital-based palliative care consultancy teams (HBPCCT) episode was identified.Results: A total of 3,869 inpatient episodes and 6,148 HBPCCT episodes were analysed. There were 2,725 (70.4%) Z51.5-coded episodes with an overlapping HBPCCT visit. Across the study period, 2,806 (90.0%) of the 3,118 total patients coded with a Z51.5 accessed a HBPCCT episode at some point. Conversely, only 2,757 (44.8%) HBPCCT episodes had a Z51.5 coded to the inpatient visit.Conclusion: The Z51.5 code is a strong indicator of specialist palliative care involvement in this setting. Our finding supports the potential of using Z51.5 code as an indicator of palliative care provision. Further exploration is required to understand why HBPCCT involvement was less well represented by the Z51.5 code.