Palliative Care Roundtable
It was my pleasure to chair a roundtable with Marie Curie UK this week on ensuring effective implementation of the Modern Service Framework on Palliative and End of Life Care. We were joined by MPs and representatives from the Royal College of Nursing, and the Royal College of GPs.
£2.80 of every £5 spent on healthcare for people in the final year of life was on emergency care. A lack of adequate community-based care is resulting in emergency department attendances and hospital admissions due to care not being delivered in the right place.
Not only is this expensive, the experience for many people saying goodbye in hospitals is also difficult and painful. As explained by Nicola Ranger from The Royal College of Nursing, there is a need for the whole system to be realigned and rethought to support both staff and patients. Attraction to social care roles is not working well enough due to low pay, large amounts of student debt and long working hours. Nurses are often the professionals closest to patients in every setting and make the difference between a good death and a poor one.
Dr Azza Elghonaimy, representing the Royal College of General Practitioners, contributed to the discussion on the vital role primary care plays in providing palliative and end-of-life care within the community. The 10-year Health Plan set out by the government in 2024 cannot be achieved if the workforce, information, responsibility and resources are not moved with it. Additionally, earlier identification will be fundamental to improving patient experience. Around half of people in their last year of life in England are currently recorded on the primary-care Palliative Care Register, while the government has set an ambition for 75-90% by 2029. General practices need the data, time, capacity, incentives and support to find people earlier and act on what is found.
Our current system is unsustainable. We cannot afford to sacrifice high-quality palliative care. Investment is needed to scale effective models of care. A better coordinated system would deliver improved outcomes while also being cost-effective. People deserve dignity in dying, the right care at the right time and in the right place.
I am proud to join parliamentary colleagues in writing to the Treasury to call for a transformation fund. This would be a time-limited pot of funding to accelerate the adoption of innovative and integrated models of care in the community.
If you or a member of your family is currently having an experience with palliative care services, Marie Curie has excellent resources available here: Information and support | Marie Curie
