Improving Palliative Care to Help Patients Die at Home: Kom op tegen Kanker Director Urges for Early Recognition and Support

“Because of the lack of support for the patient and the informal caregiver, only 50 percent of patients die at home, and 90 percent want to do so,” said David Vansteenbrugge, general director Kom op tegen Kanker.

“Research shows that appropriate palliative care brings more comfort to patients,” he continues. “They are admitted to the hospital less often, receive fewer unnecessary chemo treatments and more appropriate pain management. “

Prior mitigation

Kom op tegen Kanker therefore wants patients to be recognized as having remission earlier, so that they can receive appropriate care faster. According to Kom op tegen Kanker, the fact that this care often comes too late is partly due to a contradiction in the rules.

For example, doctors can only request palliative care for a patient when their life expectancy exceeds 3 months. On the other hand, the law calls a person palliative when he or she is in an advanced stage of a serious illness that develops and threatens life, without linking it to life expectancy.

Legally, people with a life expectancy of more than three months are also eligible for palliative care, says Kom op Tegen Kanker. According to the organization, there is still a taboo to talk about palliative care, both among healthcare providers and patients.

“Wonder if your patient dies in the next six to twelve months?”

Kom op tegen Kanker therefore advocates that patients who can no longer be cured be identified in good time as needing palliative care through the PICT (Palliative Care Identification Tool).

That tool includes the question: “Would you be surprised if your patient died in the next six to twelve months?” If the health care provider answers “no” to that question, he or she can, on the basis of several additional criteria, identify the patient as needing palliative care.

In addition, Kom op tegen Kanker wants a classification tool to estimate mitigation needs and to link appropriate support and funding to this.