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Sue Ryder Care Annual Reception
CROSS PARTY SUPPORT FOR SUE RYDER CARE AS CHARITY REVEALS CRISIS IN CARE PLANNING
Two Local MP have pledged their support for Sue Ryder Care’s appeal to government to act to avert a crisis in neurological care, after a report revealed critical information essential to plan efficiently for the needs of up to three million people does not exist.
Ian Gibson (Lab) MP for Norwich North who hosted the event to launch the campaign at the House of Commons, and Christopher Fraser (Cons) MP for South West Norfolk who also attended both signed an Early Day Motion without hesitation in support of the charity to ensure health information is collected and properly used to plan care services that will be needed in the future.
Sue Ryder Care, which provides neurological and hospice care, has released a NEW report Filling The Void: How Real Life Health Information Builds Better Services which unveils a ‘hidden population’ of people living with conditions including multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, Motor Neurone disease and stroke who are unknown to health bodies. Crucially a lack of data is creating a very real barrier to ensuring they receive appropriate, effective and cost-efficient care.
Although a strategy for the delivery of neurological care is outlined in the National Service Framework for Long Term Conditions 2005 (NSF), there are no mandatory targets or penalties and no measures for success to which managers could be held to account. While, for example, 290,000 cataract operations and 85,000 hip replacements were delivered against government targets last year, no information is collated about the estimated three million people in the UK with complex or high dependency progressive neurological conditions.
A comprehensive study of every Strategic Health Authority (SHA) in the UK exposed the fact that fewer than half of SHAs showed evidence of having a NSF Implementation Team and none of them were able to provide details of the proportion of people who had received an integrated assessment or personal care plan since the NSF launch.
“This is a serious problem which affects many people in Norwich and Norfolk, if we are going to tackle it we must ensure we have a robust national structure in place which does not allow individuals to fall through the net when they need help the most”
Stephen Collinson, Director of Healthcare at Sue Ryder Care, which provides specialist palliative and neurological care across the UK, said: “Local commissioning bodies are inconsistent in their use of data. When asked they were unable to provide reliable, valid and current information about their communities on which to base their decisions about the provision of care for neurological conditions. This situation must change and Sue Ryder Care is dedicated to helping commissioners and government achieve the goals it sets out in its policies. It is indefensible that people’s life chances are being decreased simply because targets and ring-fenced funding are not allocated. The lack of information leads to a waste of resource through services being commissioned on an ad hoc basis and people receiving inappropriate care. I am delighted that Ian Gibson and Christopher Fraser has signed up to show his support.”
The report also provides a more complete geographical picture of the gaps in palliative provision, particularly with cancer.
The charity, which provides care and support from post-acute stage to the end of a person’s life, is making a series of recommendations to government:
- A duty should be placed on commissioners to develop and publish detailed long-term neurological and palliative care strategic plans.
- Commissioners should regularly collect and utilise data in a standardised format to develop an accurate picture of patient need.
- Centralised, mandatory neurological registries, including palliative care needs, should be established by condition to facilitate service planning and development, like those already in existence for cancer.
- Transparent funding practices and contracting should be adopted to enable specialist care providers like Sue Ryder Care play their full role in providing the care the nation needs.
- Funding is increased in palliative care to meet the current government deficits, and ring-fenced funding is required to develop neurological services in the community to meet current and future need.
Sue Ryder Care has established a Healthcare Informatics Team (HIT).. Its primary objective in creating Filling The Void: How Real Life Health Information Builds Better Services was to establish the need and demand for specialist palliative and neurological care services, set against the current, planned levels of support.
To read the report in full please visit www.suerydercare.org
Notes:
- Although a strategy for the delivery of neurological care is outlined in the National Service Framework for Long Term Conditions 2005 (NSF), there are no mandatory targets or penalties and no measures for success to which managers could be held to account. While, for example, 290,000 cataract operations and 85,000 hip replacements were delivered against government targets last year, no information is collated about the estimated three million people in the UK with complex or high dependency progressive neurological conditions.
- A comprehensive study of every Strategic Health Authority (SHA) in the UK exposed the fact that fewer than half of SHAs showed evidence of having a NSF Implementation Team and none of them were able to provide details of the proportion of people who had received an integrated assessment or personal care plan since the NSF launch.
- Sue Ryder Care is the leading provider of specialist palliative and neurological care in the UK. It operates hospices, neurological care centres, homecare and community-based services.
- Its vision - ‘Care that liberates lives’ - means that the charity cares for all of a person’s needs be they physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual and is dedicated to helping people get the best from life whatever their condition.
- Sue Ryder Care’s neurological care services provide specialised long-term care and support for people living with conditions including multiple sclerosis, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Motor Neurone disease, Huntington’s disease, brain injury and dementia.
- Sue Ryder Care’s specialist palliative care services are based around consultant led inpatient units and comprise day hospice facilities, specialist community nurses, social work and bereavement services.