Marie Curie Cancer Care is a UK charity which provides high quality nursing, totally free, to give people with terminal illnesses the choice of dying at home supported by their families.
The charity believes that the right to a good death is fundamental. Central to this is the right for patients to choose their place of care and death.
Research commissioned by Marie Curie Cancer Care shows that 64% of people would choose to die at home. In reality only 25% achieve this. In 2004 Marie Curie Cancer Care initiated the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme, with the single overriding objective of providing services which enable the patient to make a free and informed choice regarding their place of treatment and death.
The programme aims to achieve this through improved planning, coordination and uptake of existing local services, working in partnership with local organisations to apply best practice health and social care. The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme seeks to make care in the community a genuine option, reducing the level of treatment and death in hospital, and replacing it with increased levels of care in the community.
The programme has six projects underway - in Lincolnshire, Tayside (Scotland), Leeds, Barnet (north London), south-east London and Somerset.
Each project works to achieve three key objectives:
- Develop patient-focused 24 hour service models that serve the local needs.
- Evaluate the economic impact upon healthcare services of more patients receiving palliative care at home as compared to hospitals.
- Disseminate programme findings to other health and social care providers that enabling the replication of solutions across the UK.
In order to achieve these aims, Marie Curie Cancer Care is working in partnership with local health and social care providers across the public and voluntary sectors to design long-term sustainable solutions that serve local needs in each project area.
