A spokesperson for the NHS in Sussex said it was committed to ensuring that patients have access to the “best possible, high-quality palliative and end-of-life care”. <\/p>\n
They said: “This includes providing a range of places for compassionate, person-centred care – and importantly, where possible, in settings out of hospital, such as community settings, and our hospices. <\/p>\n
“Emergency care services across Sussex remain under significant pressure but staff continue to work incredibly hard to make sure patients can receive the care they need at our hospitals, and across all our health and care services.<\/p>\n
“There is robust partnership work in place over the winter period to support individual care plans, and to ensure that people are in the right NHS service for their needs.”<\/p>\n
But the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said delayed discharges were a huge challenge across the NHS, and a lack of social or community care could mean some patients needing end-of-life care and support could not leave hospitals. <\/p>\n
Its president, Dr Ian Higginson, said the college was “worried about the number of patients who need end-of-life care who end up in emergency departments, and then hospitals, because the dedicated services they need are not available”. <\/p>\n
He said: “Patients who would prefer to be at home may end up in our corridors, which are not the right places for anyone, let alone those who are at the end of their lives.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, community services are also stretched and hospices are warning of a funding crisis.<\/p>\n
Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK said: “We know just how hard staff across the NHS and care system are working to give people at the end of life the care they deserve.<\/p>\n
“But, while hospital can be the right place for some, a busy ward just isn’t the right place for most people who die.<\/p>\n
“Hospices across the country want to provide more care in the community but this year we’ve seen it cut back because of funding pressures. And that is having a knock-on effect in hospitals.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spokesperson for the NHS in Sussex said it was committed to ensuring that patients have access to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-340554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}