Help the Hospices director of policy, Jonathan Ellis, said:
"Help the Hospices welcomes the government’s ambition to empower patients to share in decisions about their care and to enable professionals to tailor services around their patients needs. The government is quite right to focus on the way that services are commissioned as a key way of bringing this about. However, our biggest concern is that people will die badly if GPs are not supported to develop the knowledge and expertise they need to commission the best palliative care.
Ensuring that people who are dying receive the best care can be the most difficult thing to do. But worryingly, research has shown that GPs are the least confident among doctors in identifying the point at which their patients need end of life care (1).
The quality of commissioning of palliative care in England is currently patchy, which means that a significant number of people are facing the end of their life without the specialist care and support they desperately need. Everyone with a life-limiting and terminal illness should be able to receive the best quality care, wherever they live and wherever they choose to spend their last years, months or days - be it at home, in hospital or in a hospice.
An ageing population means that more people will be dying and they will be dying with more complex needs. As demand for hospice and palliative care services increases, it is vital we have a fair, equitable and transparent system that meets the needs of people at the most vulnerable time of their lives.
If the move to GP commissioning is to be a success, the government needs to ensure that GP commissioners have the knowledge and expertise to be able to effectively plan services for their patients with a broad spectrum of needs at the end of their lives. Services need to encompass not only mainstream health services but also meet the social, emotional and psychological elements that are so central to hospice and palliative care.
We’d like to see GPs working closely with local hospices as hospices are experts at both understanding and meeting the palliative care needs of the communities they serve. They can be an invaluable resource to support GPs."
Notes to editors
[1] Report on the findings of a survey of doctors in England, NAO website, http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0708/end_of_life_care.aspx
