Vale of York health commissioners have announced it is providing additional funding to a local hospice in its work to help terminally ill patients receive extra care and support in their own home.

NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is working closely with St Leonard’s Hospice to provide an enhanced Hospice @ Home service. The additional funding will help to treat more patients who are reaching the end of their life, in the familiar surroundings of home and their family if they choose and if it is clinically appropriate and safe to do so.

Dr Andrew Phillips, Urgent Care Lead at NHS Vale of York CCG, said: “The Hospice @ Home service provides ‘hands-on’ palliative care to patients in their own home. It will be offered when patients who want to be discharged to be able to die at home, to people who do not want to be admitted to an acute hospital bed and those who are waiting for a hospice bed and need the extra care and support at the end of life.

“The Hospice @ Home team will be working very closely with GPs, consultants, district nurses and community specialist nurses to enhance nursing care, advice and support in the evening and at weekends and I am delighted that this new and important way of providing expert care is now off the ground.

Emma Johnson, Director of Clinical Services at St Leonard’s Hospice, said: “Last winter’s joint scheme with the CCG presented a great opportunity to bring together local community teams and the skills of the Hospice @ Home team to provide care, where clinically possible, to patients at the end of life in their own home, with their own belongings and comforts around them.

“By caring for people at home or in a place which has become their home, they are able to die amongst familiar surroundings, knowing they have access to appropriate and timely care and not in a clinical setting such as an Emergency Department”.

For more information on the Hospice @ Home service, go to www.stleonardshospice.org.uk.

< Back to all news stories