Dr Sarah Scobie, Deputy Director of Research at Nuffield Trust talks about the challenges and opportunities for end-of-life care. 

Sarah has done a bit of work on end of life care, hospice activity, evaluations and work on the impact of change of palliative care during the pandemic. 

'There are an increasing number of deaths per year', and many people are reaching end of life with more health conditions and more complex needs. She asked why so many resources go towards something (hospital) that people don't really want, where they die. 

"Access to care is unequal," Sarah said, especially after the pandemic.

She discussed the NHS 10 Year Plan; including that she felt inspired by Mountbatten. 

"Most policy plans don't have anything about end-of-life care." 

Sarah said that the Neighbourhood Health Framework was released this week and had specific goals for end of life care, and identified more people who were at this stage, as well as reducing emergency emissions. Modern Service Framework is due later this year, which will set out long term goals and evidence based interventions, saying that there is a lot going on this year.

Sarah discussed the risks and challenges in end-of-life care, including NHS resources, population needs and linked these to data and information gaps. She discussed how beneficial it is to share information between different services. She discussed how hospices are funded through grants. 

Another big challenge, she discussed, was the role of ICBs and commissioning. She described how the lessons from the last 30 years was "a blunt instrument." 

"Do what you're doing, don't hold your breath, and don't wait for national policy. Make use of it, but we don't know what difference the policies will make." 

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