The document – which outlines the aims and objectives of the project – can be downloaded from Help the Hospices website.
Hospital has become the default option for dying people and for an increasing number of frail elderly people. Each year, almost 250,000 people die in a hospital setting, and a significant number of those people have no clinical need to be there.
Help the Hospices is calling on the government to do more to promote alternatives so that dying people have better care and full access to the range of available care options.
The initiative announced by Help the Hospices, aims to reduce the number of people dying in hospital by 50,000 each year by increasing the availability of alternative care supported or delivered by local hospices. The national charity believe this will lead to higher quality, better co-ordinated and responsive care for dying people and enable more to be cared for and die in the place of their choice.
Help the Hospices is calling for a new partnership between the NHS and the hospice movement to begin in April 2015.
The partnership would evaluate the impact of hospice led interventions in reducing unnecessary deaths in hospital and following completion, the charity hopes that the programme would then be rolled out nationally from April 2017.
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