PCOC aims to improve palliative care patient and carer outcomes. The PCOC program is a mature and well-established collaborative.
About PCOC
Every patient has the right to effective treatment and management of symptoms and problems. PCOC uses five clinical assessment tools to help identify and manage common symptoms and problems. The tools allow for the effectiveness of treatments to be evaluated and, importantly, they help patients, and their carers and families to communicate their needs.
The embedding of these tools into routine practice is core to PCOC. Every service that participates in PCOC has access to an education program and tailored improvement support. Services that use PCOC also have a common language. This supports quick, standardised and good communication between service providers.
PCOC services also become part of PCOC’s community of practice. PCOC’s community of practice is committed to achieving the best possible outcomes for patients, their carers and families. Services come together virtually and through our national benchmarking program.
PCOC is the national evidence hub on patients’ daily pain and symptom outcomes in Australia. PCOC holds information on more than 250,000 people. This information is used to assess the effectiveness of palliative care over the last decade.
PCOC also collaborates with researchers and publishes to advance palliative care, shape policy and achieve systems-level improvements. PCOC drives continuous improvement by providing outcome information to clinicians, and local, state and national providers of palliative care. We aim to help shape the conversation surrounding palliative care with clinicians, policymakers, peak bodies and consumers.
PCOC is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health. PCOC is managed by a collaboration of four universities. The lead is the University of Wollongong’s Australian Health Services Research Institute.
Within Australia, PCOC has led to statistically and clinically significant improvements in patient and carer outcomes over time. Due to its success, PCOC is being adopted in a number of countries around the world.
The ultimate measure of quality is the outcomes that patients, their families and carers achieve. Any palliative care service can join PCOC. We welcome collaboration. Contact us to participate in PCOC.
© PCOC UOW 2020. The intellectual property associated with a suite of resources on this website is owned by the Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC), University of Wollongong. PCOC has placed resources in the public domain and is happy for others to use them without charge, modification or development. These resources cannot be modified or developed without the consent of the University.
PCOC is a national palliative care project funded by the Australian Government Department of Health.