New palliative care funding guidelines
NHS England and Public Health England have announced there will be new palliative care guidelines to help to decide where funding is allocated.
The new guidelines, which will be in place from April 2017, will be fully revealed later this year and relate to how funding is allocated for adults and children receiving palliative care.
NHS England and Public Health England are currently consulting on alternatives to the ‘per patient tariff ’ proposed by the Palliative Care Funding Review of 2011. According to the National Health Executive (NHE), there are insufficient resources for developing national data collection and a national data standard, but local commissioners and providers will be able to adapt the data to suit their needs.
NHE said that NHS England and Public Health England have urged specialist palliative care providers and hospices to submit their aggregate minimum datasets to the National Council for Palliative Care, which is commissioned by Public Health England and Hospice UK to conduct this data collection and analysis on their behalf.
A recent Royal College of Physicians audit found that palliative care has improved since the abolition of the Liverpool Care Pathway, but still has many problems, including a lack of 24/7 specialist care.
Tags: National Council for Palliative Care, NCPC, NHS, palliative care, Public Health England, Royal College of Physicians