Status, demand and practice models of palliative day-care clinics and day hospices: a scoping review

Little is known about the structure, accessibility, service provision and needs of palliative and hospice day-care in Germany and abroad. Researchers, healthcare providers and policy makers would benefit from a systematic overview.

The aim was to identify, describe and summarise available evidence on status, demand and practice models of palliative day-care clinics and day hospices. A secondary aim was to disclose research gaps and present recommendations for clinical practice and future research.

The scoping review followed the methodological framework of Arksey and O'Malley. The analysed publications included studies of varying kinds to describe the current state of the art.

Using a highly sensitive search strategy, the authors searched PubMed, Web of Science Core Collection, CINAHL and Google Scholar within the publication window of inception to 12 June 2020. An additional hand search of the reference lists of the identified review articles was conducted.

The authors screened the titles and abstracts of 2643 studies, retrieved 197 full texts and included 32 articles in the review. The review identified nine major themes: (1) the referral process, (2) models of care, (3) patient characteristics, (4) demand, (5) the discharge process, (6) perceptions of services, (7) funding and costs, (8) outcome measurement and (9) education.

There is a need for further research to identify groups of patients who would receive the most benefit from palliative and hospice day-care and to determine any necessary revisions in admission criteria.