The Times has discovered that £286 million of funding allocated by the Government to improve end of life care services has not been used for this purpose. 90% of PCTs surveyed by the charity Help the Hospices said that the money has been ‘lost on the NHS balance sheet’ or redirected to other areas. The funding, to be supplied over two years, was announced in July 2008 by the then health secretary Alan Johnson and was supposed to be used to help more people die at home rather than in hospital. 28 PCTs were surveyed and only three could prove that they had spent more money on palliative care this year than last year. Other Trusts stated that they had been unable to spend extra money on end of life care due to financial pressure, or that they could not identify a specific amount for this purpose on their annual allocation, or that they had not received any extra money. David Praill of Help the Hospices comments: ‘This is a tragic indictment of the system. PCTs have been given a substantial amount of money to improve end-of-life care, and it simply isn’t good enough that, one year on, many don’t know where it is.’
However, a Government review of end of life care published on 14 July tells a different story. It claims that the £286 million funding programme ‘..had made a good start and was set to deliver real service improvements’. The Department of Health has stated that it is using some of the funding ‘for national work’ as well as allocating money directly to PCTs.
At present, around 20% of people die at home in England, although it is a stated preference for almost 70% of those who die following a chronic illness. 58% of people die in hospital due to a lack of hospice beds and of the support and pain management services that would enable more of these people to die at home.
posted by Cheselden Continuing Care at
13:03
