TY - JOUR U1 - Wissenschaftlicher Artikel A1 - Gothe, Holger A1 - Brinkmann, Carolin A1 - Schmedt, Niklas A1 - Walker, Jochen A1 - Ohlmeier, Christoph T1 - Is there an unmet medical need for palliative care services in Germany? Incidence, prevalence, and 1-year all-cause mortality of palliative care sensitive conditions: real-world evidence based on German claims data JF - Journal of Public Health N2 - Aim: To characterize palliative care patients, to estimate the incidence, prevalence, and 1-year all-cause mortality in patients in Germany who received palliative care treatment. Subject and methods: The study analyzed the InGef Research Database, which covers 4 million people insured in German statutory health insurance companies. Specific outpatient and inpatient reimbursement codes were used to capture cases with palliative conditions. The prevalence was ascertained for the year 2015. The incidence was calculated for patients without documented palliative care services in the year before the observation period. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to analyze the 1-year all-cause mortality. Results: The incidence rate of palliative conditions was 41.3 and 34.9 per 10,000 persons in women and men, respectively. The prevalence per 10,000 persons was 61.3 in women and 51.1 in men. The 1-year all-cause mortality among patients receiving their first palliative care treatment was 67.5%. Mortality was lower in patients receiving general outpatient palliative care treatment (AAPV; 60.8%) compared to patients receiving specialized outpatient palliative care treatment (SAPV; 86.1%) or inpatient palliative care treatment (90.6%). Within the first 30 days, mortality was particularly high (~43.0%). Conclusions: In Germany, more than 400,000 patients per year receive palliative care treatment, which is lower compared to estimates of the number of persons with a potential need for palliative care. This gap was observed particularly in younger to middle-aged individuals. The findings indicate a demand for methodologically sound studies to investigate the public health burden and to quantify the unmet need for palliative care in Germany. KW - Palliative care KW - Claims data KW - Incidence KW - Prevalence KW - Mortality KW - Germany KW - Palliativmedizin KW - Inzidenz KW - Sterblichkeit KW - Deutschland Y1 - 2020 UN - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:960-opus4-27246 SN - 1613-2238 SS - 1613-2238 U6 - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-2724 DO - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-2724 VL - 30 SP - 711 EP - 720 ER -