Borough 'Under Funded' for Palliative Care

12.02.51pm GMT Tue 4th Jan 2005

Vincent Cable MP said that "figures available from the NHS showed that Twickenham and Richmond receive a derisory share of national funding to help terminally ill patients."

It appears that over 60% (61%) of local terminally ill cancer patients die in hospital and only 17% at home and 16% in hospices. The national averages are respectively 52%, 16% and 23%. Yet surveys show that, given a choice, only a tiny percentage wish to spend their last days in hospital and the vast majority would prefer to be at home or, failing that, in a hospice. In terms of funding under a recent national fund set up to help with the planning of end of life, the borough has received only £54,000 in this financial year, an eighth of what it should have had on a pro-rata basis.

Vincent Cable said that "if choice in health care is to mean something, it must apply to where we spend the final days of our lives. It is clear that, whenever possible, people prefer to be at home with loved ones or in specialised hospices. But, in practice, those preferences are not available because the support isn't there and there isn't adequate hospice provision. In our borough, there is an especially serious lack of support".

Vincent Cable has questioned the local NHS about what contribution it will make to the new Hampton Shooting Star hospice for children when it starts to receive patients soon: most of the - limited - existing funding goes to Princess Alice hospice in Esher and Vincent Cable said: "Current NHS financial arrangements appear to be based on the rather cynical assumption that voluntary fund raising will expand to fill the gap left by a dearth of government funding. There should instead be a genuine partnership between the NHS and the voluntary sector to meet the needs of people when they are at their most vulnerable."