In addition to the overarching service principles, there are a number of things we need to take into account that will help us to develop services moving forward.
- A core and common offering will be created across all other community-services to make sure all populations have access to a consistent level of high quality care, reducing inequality and unwanted variation.
- In addition to the core service offering, individual boroughs will be able to develop additional services in order to meet local needs, and better safeguard against service inequity.
- We are committed to making changes to community services that will meet the needs of NW London residents. Co-design (and integration) with inpatient unit arrangements will ensure maximal utility is achieved from repurposed resource.
- We will retain the current hospice inpatient service capacity and the resource needed to deliver it. This will make sure we are able to respond to fluctuations in demand and meet the projected increase in need.
- We need to make sure we use the budget allocated to community-based specialist palliative care as efficiently as possible so that we are providing the maximum amount of high quality care services that we can. This could include investing in the other community-based specialist palliative care core services inlcuding:
- Inpatient bedded care
- Community-based specialist palliative care team
- 24/7 specialist palliative care advice
- Hospice@home
- Hospice outpatient clinics and wellbeing services
- Psychological support
- Bereavement support
- The NW London CSPC Model of Care Working Group is continuing to finalise these service models (including the types of beds being suggested). These will be made available when this work is completed.
- We will make sure community-based specialist palliative care services have the flexibility to increase service provision against the projected growth in need for the next five years and beyond.
- We will develop sustainable services that recognise current and projected service demand and take into account our current workforce and the limited availability of specialist palliative care professionals including consultants. Whilst recommendations have been set out by national bodies such as the Association for Palliative Medicine APM), there are limitations in how these can be applied to NW London services.
- We will continue to focus on developing existing services and reaching out to communities and groups who are not currently using community-based specialist palliative care services.