New investment in coordinated care for local people at end of life

Marie Curie Cancer Care is managing a new innovative Palliative Care Coordination Centre for NHS South of Tyne and Wear which aims to deliver the right end of life care to people across the area, enabling them to be cared for and die in the place of their choice.

The South of Tyne and Wear Palliative Care Coordination Centre, which launched earlier this month, is a one-stop-shop for planned palliative and end of life care services for people in Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland. The centre brings together access to all services including community nursing, out of hours palliative care teams, social care, local hospices, care homes, the Marie Curie Nursing Service and respite support for carers.

The centre works on planned referrals from health & social care professionals across the area, to ensure equity of access to services, manage available services and resources effectively and ensure the best package of care is arranged. Patients and their carers can also contact the centre directly to confirm details of their care.

Heather McBeth, Palliative Care Coordination Centre Manager, said: “We’ve only been up and running for a couple of weeks and we’ve already seen lots of referrals coming through. We’ve been working closely with local District Nurses and Social Workers to ensure that care is co-ordinated for people most in need and that people are able to stay in their preferred place of choice, with the right care in place to remain there.

“We’ve got a great team in place who triage the care requests as they come in according to the patients’ need and then organise care packages with the most appropriate providers, completely tailored to the individual.

“It’s a great model of how care can be co-ordinated with all the agencies working together to ensure that people at end of life are accessing the right services, when they need it most. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all my health and social care colleagues in the area for their ongoing support in establishing the Coordination Centre.”

Sheila Alexander, strategic lead for planned care, NHS South of Tyne and Wear said: “The Palliative Care Co-ordination Centre is an exciting development for palliative and end of life care.  The centre will take on the organisation and co-ordination of care which has been planned by professionals.  This means that staff caring for patients have more time to devote to hands on care”.

The centre is open from Monday to Friday, 08.00 – 18.00 and Saturday to Sunday, 10.00 – 15.00. To make a referral or request care contact the South of Tyne and Wear Palliative Care Coordination Centre on 0845 200 3126.

The need for a co-ordinated approach to palliative care was identified through Marie Curie’s Delivering Choice Programme in the area¹. The contract has been awarded to Marie Curie for three years and it is the first time the end of life care charity has won a competitive tender to run a palliative care co-ordination centre.

-ENDS-

References

^{1. The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme investigation report for Northumberland, Tyne and Wear highlighted the need to improve coordination of care across the locality because valuable clinical time was lost by professionals organising packages of care.↩}