Palliative Care Coordination Centre

The Palliative Care Coordination Centre celebrated its first birthday in January 2007. Former Mayor of Gainsborough, Kenneth Wooley (left), joined the care coordinators for the celebration - the centre was instrumental in helping Kenneth's friend John, who had terminal cancer, to spend his final days at home.

Interviews in the early investigative stages of the Lincolnshire project revealed that booking of home care for palliative patients was time-consuming, complex and inefficient. The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme is piloting a Palliative Care Coordination Centre, which coordinates packaged of home care for patients with terminal illnesses right across the county.

Most requests are made by district nurses, who have reported that the centre saves them up to four hours a day. Previously they had to ring around the providers of care themselves to arrange home care for their patients. Now they can get on with caring for them, and leave this time-consuming administration task to the new centre.

In the first two years of operation, the centre's four care coordinators received more than 62,000 requests to arrange care for patients in the community.