Hospices: Standards
(asked on 4th March 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that people receive a good standard of hospice care if they reside in an area covered by an integrated care board that provides less than the national average level of funding for hospices.
Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people, and their families, at end of life. Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations who receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. Charitable hospices are autonomous organisations that provide a range of services which go beyond that which statutory services are legally required to provide. Consequently, the funding arrangements reflect this.
In July 2022, NHS England published statutory guidance for commissioners on palliative and end of life care, setting out the considerations required for integrated care boards (ICBs), in order to meet their legal duties. This can be found at the following link:
NHS England has also published service specifications, for both adults and children and young people, which provide guidance on undertaking assessments to enable high-quality commissioning of services that meet both the population need and preferences. These can be found at the following link:
The Department is in ongoing discussions with NHS England about the oversight and accountability of NHS palliative and end of life care commissioning. We remain committed to improving patient access to, and quality of, palliative and end of life care, and are working with NHS England to reduce disparities in the standard of palliative and end of life care across the country.
From April 2024, NHS England will include palliative and end of life care in the list of topics for its regular performance discussions between national and regional leads. These national meetings will provide an additional mechanism for supporting ICBs in continuing to improve palliative and end of life care for their local population. Additionally, NHS England has commissioned the development of a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of those in their local population, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities.