New Hospice at Home Service
Woodlands Hospice is delighted to announce that, as a result of some research funding from the H B Allen Trust and subsequent 12-month pilot funding from NHS Sefton, it is launching a Hospice at Home Service.
The focus of the service will be threefold:
1) To facilitate escorted transfers home from either Hospital or the Hospice
2) To provide a Sitting Service which will complement other serivces in place throughout the Community and
3) To provide Consultant / Medical-led Crisis intervention in conjunction with GPs and District Nurses in support of Patient Choice of Place of Care and to help prevent crisis admission to Hospital.
This Consultant-led service will only be available to those who are registered with a GP in the South Sefton area.
Background
For some time now Woodlands Trustees and Senior Management Team have been developing a Business Case for the possible provision of a ‘Hospice at Home’ service, which we firmly believe will improve patients’ experience and also further raise our profile in the community. However, Woodlands would not be able to provide this service unless it was 100% funded by an external source.
At the same time, NHS Sefton, as part of its strategic commissioning plan for End of Life and preferred place of care, made a business case and investment available to deliver a consultant led ‘Hospice at Home’ service.
The PCT has now confirmed that its business case has been successful and that it wishes to commence a Hospice at Home service in Sefton. The funding for this will be on a permanent basis to contribute to the delivery of a ‘Hospice at Home’ service. A full procurement exercise will take place over the next 12 months for providers to bid to implement a permanent service and Woodlands fully intends to participate in this tendering process.
We will receive appropriate funding to immediately set up and run the service (for patients with a GP in South Sefton) until August 2012 after which time the results of the formal procurement process will be known.
NHS Sefton has developed a full service specification for the model it wants us to deliver and discussions are underway on how Woodlands intends to implement this service.
Consultation with external stakeholders will begin shortly with Woodlands hosting a number of stakeholder meetings to ensure this service complements existing community services and in no way becomes a stand-alone hospice service.
This is an exciting opportunity for us all and we look forward to us working together to develop and deliver this service in the coming months.
