Hospice and palliative care for adults

If you are suffering from a serious, incurable illness or if your condition is worsening, you may need comprehensive support and care. Hospice and palliative care should be seen as a unified approach or attitude. Their goal is to provide holistic care and support for people with serious, incurable illnesses and their relatives.

Basic hospice and palliative care is available from the time you are diagnosed with a terminal illness until the end of life. It is offered in all areas of health and social care, for example in general practitioners’ surgeries, hospitals, retirement and nursing homes or as part of mobile services. However, if you are suffering from a serious, incurable, advanced illness and are in the last phase of your life, you may wish to make use of specialised hospice and palliative care services.

Specialised hospice and palliative care services

If you suffer from physical symptoms that are difficult to treat due to your advanced illness, you may need specialised hospice and palliative care services. These conditions may include:

  • pain,
  • nausea,
  • shortness of breath,
  • tiredness or exhaustion,
  • psychological or social stress.

Specialised hospice and palliative care services are designed to support you in maintaining your quality of life as well as possible and living a self-determined until the end.
Specialised hospice and palliative care offers support with:

  • managing physical and psychological challenges,
  • caring of patients, their relatives and close persons,
  • relieving the burden on relatives and close persons, and
  • coping with crises.

The following specialised hospice and palliative care services offer you and your relatives and close persons advice, support, care and assistance in the last phase of your life either:

  • at home by mobile palliative care teams or hospice teams,
  • in palliative care units,
  • in an inpatient hospice, or
  • in a day hospice.

If you make use of a specialised hospice or palliative care service, a hospice team will visit you. A hospice team consists of qualified volunteer hospice companions who will visit you at home or in a retirement or nursing home, for example. The team also visits hospital wards that specialise in the care of seriously and terminally ill patients, also referred to as palliative care wards.

Austria-wide definitions and service descriptions for specialised hospice and palliative care services can be found under the following link:

Hospice and palliative care - Website Ministry of Social Affairs

You will find further information on the following pages:

Last update: February 3, 2025