Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average cost per patient for palliative care was in each of the last five years.

Palliative care services are included on the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) in England must commission. It is difficult to quantify the total provision of, or spend on, palliative and end of life care at either a national or local ICB level because it is delivered every day by a wide range of specialist and generalist health and care workers providing care for a wide range of needs that include, but are not always exclusive to, palliative care.

That care is provided across multiple settings, including in primary care, community care, in hospitals, in hospices, in care homes, and in people’s own homes. Therefore, not all palliative and end of life care will be recorded or coded as such.