Background The Palliative Care unit at Tata Memorial Hospital has a multidisciplinary home care team serving Mumbai based population for over a decade.

Objective Study the relevance of Canadian Health Care Evaluation Project (CANHELP) questionnaire in Mumbai based patients and families registered with Palliative Medicine Department, Tata Memorial Centre who are being presently provided with homecare services and to identify unmet needs of care provided at end-of-life.

Methods CANHELP Questionnaire assesses importance of end of life care provision and satisfaction derived, on a scale of 1–5 (ascending scale).There are 38 patient centred questions and 40 family questions/per unit; divided into subscales by authors. In this cross-sectional IRB approved study, the CANHELP questionnaire was served on 20 such patients and their families from September to November 2012 after taking informed consent in their preferred language. Data were collected and analyzed using SPSS.

Conclusions The mean value calculated for Importance reflects that both the patients and families found end of life care provision to be very important and the CANHELP questionnaire to be relevant. Satisfaction reflects that both groups were somewhat satisfied with end of life care services provided.

The families were somewhat satisfied with their own involvement in care at the end of life for their patients. They feel that they can contribute more towards it. The patients were not very satisfied with their participation in deciding the care process at the end of life. A closer look reveals that this is particularly regarding discussions with doctor about the place of management and the use of life sustaining technologies at the end of life and there is a need for further discussions regarding this.