Marie Curie and Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG launch UK’s first social investment in health initiative

An innovative pilot¹ by leading end of life care charity Marie Curie Cancer Care and Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG); Social Investment in End of Life Care Initiative, could act as a catalyst for change for the 550,000² people who die each year.

The pilot will explore how social investment can lead to improvement of services for end of life care patients and enable patient choice, ensuring that the right treatment and support is delivered at the right time, in the right place.

Social investment in end of life care could provide the funding needed to help the NHS increase capacity for palliative care services. This will enable health providers to meet the needs of Britain’s rapidly ageing population - helping people to be cared for in the community, freeing up NHS beds (40% of those receiving end of life care in hospital have no clinical need to be there³) and saving the NHS money.

This investment could enable NHS commissioners to ‘rebalance’ end of life care - increasing care provision in the community.

Currently, throughout the UK, community palliative and end of life care services are under-invested in and don’t have the capacity to meet current needs, much less the increased demand expected from 2015.

Investing in community palliative care would enable more people to be cared for and die in the place of their choice. Most people (63%) would prefer to die at home; however, only 21%, across England and Wales, do so⁴. More than 50% currently die in hospital – the place where they are least likely to want to die.

Britain’s rapidly ageing population and increases in the number of people with multiple long-term conditions will mean, that by 2030, the number of deaths each year will outnumber the number of births, rising by 17% to 590,000. NHS spending on end of life care is also expected to increase from £20 billion to £25 billion by 2030⁵.

“This is the first social investment project for end of life care in the UK. If it works well, we want to use it as a blueprint model for services elsewhere. By March 2014, we aim to have a new integrated model for end of life care and social investment alternatives for funding, with a payment by results model.

“We have an ageing population and expect the number of people dying will increase. While it’s cheaper for people to be cared for in the community, and it’s what they want, it’s challenging for commissioners to find the money needed to develop new services that are community based. Social funding offers a way of funding that change.” Says Andrew Whitehead, Director of Finance, Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Jon Dicken, Chief Officer Operations at Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG, said: “We are committed to giving our patients a choice about the end of life care support they receive and to delivering high quality services for them.

“We are very pleased to be working with Marie Curie Cancer Care on the Social Investment in End of Life Care Initiative, so that more people can be cared for in the place of their choice.”

The Social Investment in End of Life Care Initiative aims to:

• establish a proof of concept for social investment in community end of life care
• help service commissioners develop high quality models of integrated care, meeting the needs of patients
• enable more people to be cared for in the community, delivering choice at end of life
• reduce the use of acute and crisis care, delivering efficiency and productivity benefits.

-ENDS-

Footnotes

^{1. Marie Curie Cancer Care and Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group is piloting the UK’s first social investment healthcare initiative. The pilot is working with key supporting partners, including the NHS Confederation, NHS Clinical Commissioners, Social Investment Business, Bevan Brittan, Social Finance and Unipart, to explore the application of social investment models to transform end of life care. The pilot is funded by the Social Investment Business and is supported by the Department of Health.↩}

^{2. ONS↩}

^{3. National Audit Office, 2008↩}

^{4. Dying Matters Coalition, dated 2013↩}

^{5. Dying for Change, Demos 2010↩}