Palliative Care Funding Review

 
28 July, 2011

Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice welcomes the publication of the Palliative Care Funding Review.   The terms of reference given by the Secretary of State in 2010 was for the review to consider the current funding mechanism for dedicated palliative care for adults and children and make recommendations which encourage the development of community based palliative care and supports the exercise of choice by patients and users of palliative care.

The 100 page report makes a number of bold recommendations, including:

• Building a per patient funding mechanism that recognises the patient's phase of their illness and which is applied equally to all providers
• Clearly defining those services that the NHS will fund and those services that will need to be funded by society
• More closely integrating health and social care for those who are at the end of their life
• Encouraging commissioners to commission services on the basis of quality not price
• The development of a standard contract for commissioning NHS palliative care services
• The introduction of five pilot sites from April 2012 to collect reliable and consistent data in order to inform the shadow currencies and tariffs that would be introduced in April 2014.  The review envisages full implementation of the recommendations from April 2016

Sarah Brocklebank, Chief Executive, comments "This report provides us with a basis to move forwards to help secure the future of high quality end of life care for local patients and achieve more equitable funding between providers.  Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice receives just 12% of its funding from the NHS yet all of our patients are referred to us from the NHS.  The additional £15,000 needed each and every day to provide the full range of services at the Hospice has to come from our local community coveringWest Surreyand North East Hampshire.   The ability for us to grow our services is clearly constrained by this enormous financial challenge.

We hope that the report's recommendations will end the postcode lottery about funding for end of life care and enable a more equitable distribution of resources in response to patient need.   We acknowledge that the "devil will be in the detail" but hoped that it now gives a strong basis for dialogue that recognises the crucial role of the voluntary sector in end of life care. 

Sarah continues "Our aspiration is to continue to provide high quality end of life care in partnership with our colleagues in the NHS which ensures patient needs are met.  We know there is so much more that we could do for patients and their families if we had greater confidence about future income streams.  We hope that per patient funding will provide a fair and equitable basis for future commissioning decisions and the proposed definition of NHS responsibilities for end of life care (and those areas that will fall outside the NHS' remit) will give clarity to all concerned".

At the start of July we welcomed local MP, Jeremy Hunt, and were able to show him the new facilities within the community base at the Hospice (The Dove Centre) and to talk with him about the current challenges facing the Hospice, including those about balancing the need to grow our services in response to patient demand against the financial stability needed to protect those services longer term.

Editors notes

For over 30 years Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice has provided Specialist Palliative Care to adult patients and their families living with life limiting illnesses inWest Surreyand North East Hampshire serving 600,000 residents.

Every day we support over 140 patients and carers in their own homes, in the community and at the Hospice (on our In-Patient Unit, in Day Hospice, at out-patient appointments and through Patient and Family Services).

The NHS covers less than 12% of the Hospice’s costs. This means we have to fundraise 88p in every pound the Hospice needs to spend so we rely heavily on the support and generosity of our local community.

All our services are free of charge to our patients and their families, but we need to fundraise over £15,000 a day to offer such an exceptional standard of clinical care and support.

Please get in touch for more information on how you can support your local hospice.

 Please visit www.pth.org.uk or call 01252 729446 for further information.