The 2015-2018 French national palliative care program aimed to reduce territorial disparities of access to palliative care (PC) by increasing the number of beds in dedicated PC units and beds in hospital wards facing end-of-life situations, aiming to reach a minimum average density of 1 bed per 100,000 inhabitants in PC units.

To draw a 2017 inventory of all PC beds and to verify the reduction of territorial inequalities.

In 2017, France had on average 2.6 beds in PC units and 7.8 PC beds in hospital wards per 100,000 inhabitants. Strong territorial disparities remained: 27 counties still did not have any PC units and 4 had less than 1 bed per 100,000 inhabitants in PC units. The development of PC beds in hospital wards partly compensated these inequalities: counties without PC units had an average density of 9.6 beds in hospital wards per 100,000 inhabitants but when pooling beds in PC units and beds in hospital wards, 17 of those counties had a density of PC beds lower than the national average (6.5 versus 10.5 PC beds per 100,000 inhabitants). If these results appear relatively satisfactory in quantitative terms, the quality of palliative care provided in those beds, especially in hospital wards, must be analyzed: does it meet patients’ needs ?

A better understanding of care provided in beds in PC units and in beds in hospital wards is necessary to verify whether the territorial inequalities of access to palliative care have been improved by the creation of PC beds in hospital wards.