Oncology: palliative care for only 3 out of 10 patients and only 9 paediatric hospices
Taking care is less than 45 days: the National Network for effective integration between territory and hospital must be completed by 2028
Key points
In Italy, the average duration of care for a cancer patient is less than 45 days and only one third of the 590,000 adults who would be entitled to palliative care actually access it. Even more critical is the paediatric situation in which the possibility of access to regional specialist centres is extremely uneven throughout Italy: today it is provided to just under 3,000 minors compared to over 10,000 who would need it. This figure reveals a systemic delay: palliative care is often late and limited to the last days of life.
This is the scenario that emerged during the 32nd national congress of the Italian Society of Palliative Care (Sicp). A professional community united around a common goal: to anticipate the care of people and their families from the diagnosis of an incurable disease and to overcome the vision of palliative care as a 'last minute' intervention, moving from a model centred on the event of death to a model that puts the person at the centre.
Two regulatory milestones to be translated into practice
2025 - Sicp recalls - marks the conclusion of the accreditation process of the palliative care networks initiated by the 118/2020 agreement within the State-Regions Conference, and by 2028 the national palliative care network envisaged by law 197/2022 is to be completed. "But the road is still long," says Gianpaolo Fortini, president of the scientific society. "We are suspended between two goals that speak of responsibility and hope. Deadlines can be walls or doors: it is up to us to choose. There are still too many people who cannot access palliative care. Our task is to preside over change with intelligence, passion and care'.
The importance of early palliative assessment
Sicp proposes a radical change of perspective: early palliative assessment, right from the diagnosis of an incurable disease, extension of early care to guarantee years of quality of life free from unnecessary suffering, strong and effective hospital-territory integration with flexible pathways built on real needs and not on the clinical times of terminality.
'Early palliative care,' recalls Flavio Fusco, scientific head of the Congress, 'is not a luxury, but an element of equity and efficiency. They improve the quality of life, reduce unnecessary hospitalisations and orient the networks towards truly continuous and integrated care'. In this perspective, the 2025 Congress strengthens the educational dimension with an international faculty and sessions dedicated to the new competences of the teams, to regional models in comparison, and to the cultural and social complexity of the issues of frailty and incurability.
