Palliative and end of life care profiles March 2025 update: statistical commentary
Published 4 March 2025
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2025
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/palliative-and-end-of-life-care-profiles-march-2025-update/palliative-and-end-of-life-care-profiles-march-2025-update-statistical-commentary
What’s new
The indicator describing the percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life by age (all ages, under 75 years, 75 years and older) has been updated in the Palliative and end of life care profiles (PEoLC). The update includes new data for 2023 and refreshed data for 2015 to 2022.
Introduction
The PEoLC profile aims to improve the availability and accessibility of information and intelligence around PEoLC. It provides an overview across multiple geographies in England, to support commissioning and planning of local services.
This commentary summarises the variation in the percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life by age, over time, by deprivation and by geographic area. It is important to consider other factors that can affect the value of this indicator, including cause of death as outlined in the Patterns of care factsheet, England 2022 on Fingertips.
Main findings
The updated percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life shows:
-
in 2023, 5.6% of deaths (all ages) had 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life
- this has fallen from a high of 8.2% in 2019
- this indicator is lower for people who died aged 75 and older (5.1%) compared to people who died aged under 75 years (8.7%)
- the range of values in integrated care boards (ICBs) in 2023 is 3.8% to 8.8%, with half of values between 5.5% and 6.7%
Trend in England
The percentage of people who died with 3 or more emergency hospital admissions in the last 90 days of life has fallen from a peak in 2019. In 2023 nearly 34,000 people (6.2%) had 3 or more emergency hospital admissions in their last 90 days compared to about 40,000 (8.2%) in 2019. Figure 1 shows that this percentage is higher for people who died aged under 75 years than for those 75 years and older. For both these age groups the percentage has fallen since 2019.
Figure 1: trend in percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life by age at death, 2015 to 2023
Local variation
There is considerable variation in this percentage between local areas.
The percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days of life has fallen in the most recent 3 years, but figure 2 shows in 2023 ICBs at the top of this range had almost double the percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions than ICBs at the bottom of the range.
Figure 2: variation between ICBs in the percentage of deaths with 3 or more emergency admissions in the last 90 days (all ages) 2015 to 2023
Further information
Further information relating to these indicators is available from the palliative and end of life care profiles factsheets also published by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID).
Responsible statistician, product lead: Andy Pring, Jennifer Yip.
For queries relating to this document, please contact neolcin@dhsc.gov.uk.