NHS pressures having ‘devastating’ impact on dying patients

Patients are dying in hospital without their families because of pressure on NHS services, hospices have told The Independent.

A major care provider has warned that it has seen a “huge shift” in the number of patients referred too late to its services.

The warning comes as NHS England begins a new £32m contract with hospices to help hospitals discharge as many patients as possible this winter.

NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the health service was preparing for an Omicron-driven Covid wave that could be as disruptive as, or even worse than, last winter’s crisis.

Hospices are already dealing with a “huge volume of death and patients needing support”, according to the head of policy at Hospice UK, Dominic Carter.

He told The Independent that hospices had seen a huge shift in the number of patients referred to their services too late, when they are in a “very serious” state of health.

He added: “We don’t really know what kind of support is actually out there for those people, while hospitals have difficulties and deal with challenges around backlogs and Covid. There are lots of people that have been in the community, where hospices are trying to reach them but aren’t always able to identify who needs that care and support.

“They’re really important, those five or six final days, for the individual and their families. Yet this is spent in crisis rather than being helped as much as possible in a comfortable environment by the hospice ... [instead] an ambulance is called, and they’re having to be cast into hospital.”

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Source: The Independent, 26 December 2021