PHP268 - THE HUNGARIAN PALLIATIVE CARE POSITION, CHALLENGES, BREAK POINTS

Abstract

Modern palliative-hospice care has gained space in Europe for more than 50 years. The palliative medicine has gained its place in evidence-based medicine in more and more countries. However, development, as in many other medical fields, is not uniform, there are big differences between countries in the world. Hungarian palliative-hospice care has developed significantly over the past 15 years.The review mainly demonstrates the hospice care data of 2017. In order to review the development of the nationwide palliative care the Hungarian Hospice- Palliative Association sends a detailed online questionnaire to each hospice services every year. At the beginning of 2018 we contacted 84 care providers. In the questionnaire we asked them - among other things - about the form of hospice care, the number of patients, the period of care, the mortality data and about the service providing team and their qualifications. We paid special attention to the available resources and the main difficulties of the care providers. According to the survey, 93 health care providers performed hospice activities in Hungary. Of those who died of cancer, 9091 people taken care of palliative care. The number of nursing days was 232,636 days (average: 25.6 days), 24.8 days for institutional care, 29.1 days for home care. Bed occupancy was 74.8%. Of the patients in hospice care, 5798 (63.8%) died; 76.8% of the patients in the institutions died, while 61.4% of those in the home care sector died. The proportion of cancer patients was 90.5%. The integration of palliative care into standard oncology is an international requirement, which also appears in the form of professional guidelines. Hungary has also played a role in the development of the European model of integrated palliative care of which Hungarian implementation, the Pécs model, is discussed in detail in our paper.