Better end of life care in Hull
06 March, 2014
A new approach that improves care for people affected by cancer and other life limiting conditions at the end of their life is to be introduced in Hull.
City Health Care Partnership CICis working with Macmillan Cancer Support in Hull to trial a model called Macmillan Specialist Care at Home which is being rolled out in six locations across the UK.
Based on a Swedish model of advanced home care, Macmillan Specialist Care at Homein Hull will be led by a community-based speciality doctor working with a team of highly skilled nurses, palliative care pharmacists and other professionals to provide flexible and personalised care. The team will work closely with Hull GPs to support and empower them to deliver high quality palliative and end of life care. People affected by cancer and other life limiting conditions are referred for specialist care at the earliest opportunity and offered as much medical treatment and support in the home as possible. The team also collaborates with a range of local health and social care organisations to join up and co-ordinate the right support for the individual and their family.
The programme in Hull will start in April 2014 and run until 2016, at which point an external evaluation undertaken by academics at Nottingham University’s Sue Ryder Centre will inform future plans, drawing on the expertise of local hospices in its delivery.
Ciarán Devane, Chief Executive, Macmillan Cancer Support, says:
“We know that three quarters of cancer patients would prefer to spend their final days in their own home with family and friends, but less than a third actually do. To allow people a real choice, we need health and social care services to be co-ordinated into a seamless package of care. We hope that by testing the Macmillan Specialist Care at Home approach with City Health Care Partnership CIC, Hull Clinical Commissioning Group and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust in Hull we will further demonstrate a blueprint for the way end of life care is delivered in the future.”
Andrew Burnell, Chief Executive, City Healthcare Partnership CIC added:
“We are very excited and proud to have been given the opportunity to work with Macmillan Cancer Support to develop this innovative model of care for patients with life limiting illnesses. Over the past five years we have worked hard to develop high quality end of life care services in the community and this project will enable us to build on this work.”
Partners in this new approach are:
Hull Clinical Commissioning Group
Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals
Hull City Council
Hull Churches
Dove House Hospice
Notes
1 – The Macmillan Specialist Care at Home approach originated with the Midhurst Macmillan Specialist Palliative Care service in Sussex, where it was shown that people with cancer and others with complex care needs had a high quality experience of care. More people were able to be cared for and die in their preferred place; emergency admissions and patient stays in hospital were reduced; and the total cost to the health and social care system of caring for people in the last year of life was reduced by 20 per cent. This was found to be the case in an evaluation consisting of two elements: an economic evaluation carried out by Monitor Company Group and a qualitative service evaluation carried out by the Universities of Huddersfield and Sheffield. We are awaiting academic publication of the full evaluation. A summary can be found on our website here: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Documents/AboutUs/Research/Researchandevaluationreports/MidhurstSummary(2).pdf)
2 – The six innovation centres are: City Healthcare Partnership CIC (Hull); Earl Mountbatten Hospice (Isle of Wight); West Norfolk Clinical Commissioning Group; Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Groups; Mary Stevens Hospice and partners (Dudley, West Midlands); and the North London Hospice (Barnet, Enfield and Haringey, London).
About Macmillan Cancer Support. Cancer is the toughest fight most of us will ever face. But you don’t have to go through it alone. The Macmillan team is with you every step of the way. We are the nurses and therapists helping you through treatment. The experts on the end of the phone. The advisers telling you which benefits you’re entitled to. The volunteers giving you a hand with the everyday things. The campaigners improving cancer care. The fundraisers who make it all possible. We are Macmillan Cancer Support. www.macmillan.org.uk
City Health Care Partnership CIC is the parent "for better profit" co-owned business of a group of established and developing businesses, providing community health and social care, primary and specialist care primary health and integrated social care services to over half a million people in Hull, the East Riding of Yorkshire and Knowsley, Merseyside.
