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End of life planning between health professionals,patients and carers
Organisation: Eastern Birmingham PCT Recent audits of emergency admissions in EBPCT have demonstrated that over half are in the last six months of life and this suggests poor end of life planning and communication between health professionals and patients and their carers, high rates of inappropriate admission, and poor integration of palliative care with mainstream NHS services, particularly as this is typically provided through voluntary bodies and has been dominated by a response to cancer rather organ failure or dementia. We are using the gold standards framework to systematically identify people entering the palliative phase of care and create shared care plans across primary, community, hospital, ambulance and palliative services with the aim of raising the proportion of patients who die in the venue of their preference. At present over 80% of people say they want to die somewhere other than hospital, but 56% of people die in hospital (Higginson I (2003) Priorities for end of life care in England). |
