End Of Life Care Analysis

“In recent years, we have made great strides in improving and raising the importance of end of life care. The Department of Health’s End of Life Care Strategy4 set us on this path in 2008 and was soon followed by a series of key documents that have charted our progress in understanding and improving end of life care in recent years. These have included the NICE Quality Standard for End of Life Care5, the Independent Review of Palliative Care Funding6, and One Chance to Get it Right7, the system-wide response to the review of the Liverpool Care Pathway.8 Finally, the Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care9, published in September 2015, has built on this progress and provided a framework for national and local health and care system

We also know that only 19% of people dying at home received complete relief from pain, all of the time. We know that too many people are not involved enough in decisions about their care and do not receive end of life care in their preferred place.11 Recent reports have shown that, in too many instances, care is not sufficiently focused on the person’s individual needs and preferences.12 13 This is not acceptable. Our ambition is for everyone approaching the end of life to receive high quality care that reflects their individual needs, choices and preferences. Everyone, including children, should be able to be involved in decisions about their own care and develop care plans, together with those important to them and the health and care professionals responsible for their care. The Government commissioned the Review of Choice in End of Life Care14 (“the Review”) to provide independent advice on improving the quality and experience of care for adults at the end of life, their careers and others who are important to them, by expanding choice. The Review, which was focused on adults, demonstrated clearly that high quality care and personalised care based on people’s choices and preferences are inseparable. People

This response outlines the actions we are taking, led by organisations across the health and care system, to meet our ambition for all people to have high quality, personalised end of life care built around their needs. Our approach is founded on a national Commitment for end of life care. To deliver this, we will support the system to achieve better, more personalised care for all through a combination of improvements and innovations in the way end of life care is delivered and provided. At the same time, we will spread the lessons and good practice we know exist across the system, ensuring that everyone can benefit from quality improvements. We will also ensure that end of life care is central to wider reform and transformation being delivered under the NHS Five Year Forward View. This means ensuring that end of life care is firmly embedded as core business for the NHS and in all major NHS transformation programmes in the future. It is also why we have included children and young people in the Commitment and in this response as a whole even though they were not explicitly included in the Review. We want to set a clear expectation of the standard of care that everyone should be offered as they