Projects

Principles for commissioning palliative care

Barnet PCT and local stakeholders have come together to agree the following principles for commissioning palliative care. Barnet PCT is committed to commissioning palliative and end of life care services that:

are designed in response to local needs;
ensure equality of access to appropriate services for the whole population of Barnet, and address any specific inequalities of access;
support the PCT’s aim of increasing the number of patients who are able to be at home at the end of their lives, if that is their wish, while ensuring adequate provision for those patients who are unable to, or do not wish to, remain at home;
support patient and carer choice, within the services available, by ensuring that there are a range of options available to people with palliative care needs and people at the end of life to support individual preferences, which should be recorded;
ensure that information and support is available to patients with palliative care patients and their carers to enable them to make informed, supported, choices;
work in partnership with other providers to support the coordination of services for the patient and their carer;
ensure that, where possible and realistic, services are close to the users home and based in the community;
demonstrate value for money;
are developed with the involvement of the public, patients and their carers, and clinicians with both specialist and generalist expertise;
meet national and local clinical and non-clinical standards;
ensure that staff have the competencies needed to deliver the service;
are covered by written protocols and guidance that are adhered to and monitored;
deliver key outcomes such as timeliness and continuity of care;
provide the complete range of services to those people who are not able to access services in line with the locally agreed model of care, e.g. residential homes, prisons, travellers, housebound, those with long term complications and disabilities;
actively monitor take up of the service, managing outcomes across the population of patients, and seeking continuous improvement, with arrangements in place for local audit, benchmarking against national quality markers, contribution to national data collection or audits.