Terminal cancer patients who received palliative care at the end of their life. Palliative care is identified in billing data: this includes patients receiving a lump sum for palliative care at their usual place of residence, patients with visits of the general practitioner or nurse within a palliative setting, patients hospitalised in palliative units or hospitalised patients with visits of multidisciplinary palliative care teams.

Number of patients who received palliative care (in usual place of residence or in hospital) (regardless of time period)

Number of patients diagnosed with a cancer with poor prognosis and that died within the studied time period

Patients with more than one invasive tumour (until 2015) Patients without a Belgian residence Patients without national social security number Patients for whom no Intermutualistic Agency (IMA) data of the year of death were available (=3.9%) Patients with an uncertain date of diagnosis It is currently not possible to identify all palliative patients in administrative databases or in registries. Therefore, the indicator is restricted to patients diagnosed with cancer having a poor prognosis and deceased during the study period, all other patients are excluded Age at diagnosis <18 years

Other restrictions: Maximum 3 years of follow-up was applied. Analyses are limited to patients who died before January 1st of the third year following the year of incidence. For example: patients diagnosed in 2006 were included in case they died in 2006, 2007 or 2008; patients diagnosed in 2007 were included in case they died in 2007, 2008 or 2009, etc. These cohorts were defined in order to assure that for every diagnosis, the same follow-up period could be taken into account. By applying this definition, a bias induced by varying length of the follow-up period could be avoided.

None

None

Belgian Cancer Registry (BCR) linked with Intermutualistic Agency (IMA) data. The Belgian Cancer Registry is an exhaustive national register of cancer cases. The IMA dataset includes all information as collected by the seven existing health insurance agencies in Belgium. This database covers data on reimbursed medication and reimbursement for the use of health services, collected in the framework of the compulsory Belgian health care and benefits insurance program.

Public reporting

kce.fgov.be/sites/default/files/2023-06/KCE370PerformanceRevisionframeworkconceptualReport.pdf

www.healthybelgium.be/metadata/hspa/eol1.pdf