OUR HOMECARE STATISTICS

CanSupport serves a wide range of patients as our statistics, diagramatically illustrated below, show. In 2008, 48% of  patients admitted to our home care programme were male and 52% were female.



The age-range of patients in 2008 was 1 year to 92 years of age, with over a third of patients over the age of 60 years.

We look after people at different stages of their illness; they have heard about us from a variety of sources and contact us in different ways. Forty percent of our homecare patients called the CanSupport Helpline (HL) and another 50% were referred by the Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital at AIIMS (IRCH). Others referred themselves directly to the home teams (self).



The majority of patients we care for are with us for a period that ranges from a few weeks to a few months (approximately six months). A few have been under our active care for over four years. The length of time depends on the needs of the patient and family and on when they were referred to us or heard about our programme.



Each team visits between 5 and 6 patients a day, and make at least 95 visits per month. CanSupport has an emphasis on really getting to know every family, and this starts with the first visit, which is on average around 1.5 hours. Generally, most follow visits last 30 to 45 minutes.

The homecare teams have looked after people with over 60 different types of cancers. Thirty percent of our homecare patients are on oral morphine and a significant number are provided free supportive equipment for the duration of their illness.

CanSupport reaches out to patients from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds; it is especially proud of serving those who are most vulnerable.



In 2008, and in 2009 till date, 70% of our patients have died at home, where they wanted to be in their final days of life. However, should a patient want to finally die elsewhere we do not discourage this as we believe it is his/her choice and we must respect it.   




No one wants to die in pain. Alleviating pain is one of our main concerns. The majority of our patients have pain scores between 2 and 7 (taken on a 10 point scale with 10 being the worst pain and 0 being no pain.) These patients finish with pain scores between 1 and 3, even though their disease has often progressed and pain would ordinarily be much higher than before.








In part, because of the quality of care and the number of our patients and families who recommend CanSupport services to other families, as well as because foundations and international organizations have come out of the woodwork to support and help expand our work, CanSupport has grown enormously.



Note: These statistics are drawn from 2008 and early 2009 aggregated data. Statistics will be updated periodically with new data.