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Funding & Data
Policy and funding guidelines
The revised 2011-12 policy and funding guidelines provides information for all funded organisations and comprises of three parts:
- Key changes and new initiatives
- Health operations
- Technical guidelines
Unassigned Bed Fund
The primary aim of the Unassigned Bed Fund (UBF) is to fund the hire or purchase of equipment or services to allow palliative care clients to remain at home without compromising their quality of care when they would otherwise require admission to an inpatient setting. The UBF is designed to fund services or equipment which a community palliative care service would not normally provide as part of its standard service or which are above the usual level of service provision. Use of the UBF varies across the state and where use of the UBF does not meet the guidelines, community palliative care services are encouraged to work with their regional department officer to develop a strategy to address inconsistencies.
Unassigned Bed Fund guidelines
Flexible Support Fund
The Flexible Support Fund assists in meeting gaps in service or equipment availability for children with palliative care needs who are in the terminal phase of their illness and who are clients of the Victorian Paediatric Palliative Care Program (VPPCP).
Flexible Support Funds guidelines
Victorian Integrated Non-Admitted Health Minimum Dataset
The Victorian Integrated Non-Admitted Health (VINAH) minimum dataset collects data on the provision of a range of non-admitted services in Victoria. The data is used to provide equitable funding to public hospitals and to support health services' planning, policy formulation and epidemiological research. The dataset enables the department to meet its State and Commonwealth accountability obligations. All public hospitals providing non-admitted services in scope for VINAH report a minimum data set of patient-level data related to their activities.
Two palliative care programs report data through VINAH: community palliative care, and palliative care consultancy teams. While some data items for these two programs are palliative care-specific, most are common across a variety of other programs such as Transition Care Program or Post-Acute Care.
Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset
The Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED) collects data on all admitted patients from Victorian public and private hospitals. VAED data are used for health services planning, policy formulation, casemix funding and epidemiological research.
Palliative Care patients fall into two categories:
- patients admitted to palliative care-funded beds at specific services, which are identified as care type 8 in the Care Type field, and
- patients admitted to general acute beds who have a palliative diagnosis. These patients are identified by the use of the Z51.5 diagnosis code in any one of the TDIAG1-TDIAG40 fields.
Palliative Care Resource Allocation Model (PCRAM)
The PCRAM is a model for distributing new funds to Victorian palliative care services. It uses the base population figure for the service catchment area and applies weighting for three factions:
- proportion of population in the catchment area aged 70+ years
- socio-economic status of the population in the catchment area
- rurality of the catchment area.
Surveys
The Victorian Palliative Care Satisfaction Survey (VPCSS) is undertaken on an annual basis. The VPCSS captures feedback from patients, carers, and bereaved carers in both community and inpatient palliative care settings. The feedback is used to identify priority areas for palliative care agencies to improve their service delivery.
