While the organisation is formally not weighing into the assisted suicide debate currently being held in state Parliament, it said its newly-launched End of Life Framework would greatly enhance prospects for people receiving palliative care.

Launched last week at the Doug Lindsay Reserve in Creswick with keynote speakers from Creswick and Clunes Medical Centre, Ballarat Hospice, Australian Catholic University and Grampians Regional Palliative Care Consortium, the framework aims to better engage the Hepburn Shire community to ensure the wishes of dying people are met.

“Most people want to live,” said Gabrielle Kirby, Hepburn Health manager of integrated aged care.

“People won’t be choosing assisted suicide because they’ll be having the best-quality care.

“People want to live comfortably, as long as they can and as well as they can.”

Ms Kirby said Hepburn Health’s new framework focused on “advanced care planning” with general and specialist services working together so patients could the final say as to where they died – at home or in care. 

She said currently only 14 per cent of patients Australia-wide were able to die at home, even though the vast majority wished to.

The framework comes just months after Victorian health minister Jill Hennessy announced funds to help more people die at home.

Ms Kirby also said recent funding from the Travis Review had provided increased bed capacity for palliative care patients at Creswick Hospital, providing for a dedicated palliative care room, a purpose-built family room and 24-hour on-call care.

Creswick doctor Claire Hepper has been instrumental in raising money for Shannon’s Packs – palliative care medication kits named after a 19-year-old girl who died of leukemia earlier this year.

Dr Hepper said the Parliamentary Inquiry Into End of Life Choices was about much more than just assisted suicide, with palliative care professionals focused on the best ways to give care rather than euthanasia.