Hospice funding crisis: "Not enough funding is reaching hospices"

Margaret Middlebrook, chairman of trustees at Saint Catherine’s Hospice in Scarborough, told The Yorkshire Post the funding model, only introduced in 2022, needs changing.

“I think the whole way hospices are funded, it has to be root and branch reform,” she said.

“It doesn’t work the way it’s happening now. Funding for hospices needs to be something that goes directly to a hospice under whatever funding mechanism they choose. But it’s got to be hospice money, and ringfenced for hospices.”

The hospice is looking at a £1m deficit this year, she added.

Meanwhile Kerry Jackson, chief executive of St Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds has called for “proper investment by the NHS”.

St Gemma’s is Yorkshire’s biggest hospice, which last year saw more than 500 in-patients and more than 1,300 referred to the hospice.

She told this newspaper that hospice funding “needs to be fair, it needs to be sustainable. At the moment it isn’t.”

"It is unthinkable to imagine my home city without St Gemma’s, or a society not able to meet the growing needs of the population for quality end of life care,” she added.

It comes as North Yorkshire Council this week looks to ensure fairer funding for hospices from the Government, as it has been revealed that St Michael’s Hospice in Harrogate is facing a £500,000 funding shortfall this year.

A cross-party motion to write to Health Secretary Victoria Atkins is due before the next full council meeting on Wednesday.

Harrogate councillor Peter Lacey, who proposed the motion with the council’s scrutiny of health committee chair, Councillor Andrew Lee, said relying on residents to fund the hospice was neither sustainable nor fair.

He said: “Folk in Harrogate may be able to support and sustain a hospice, but in other locations perhaps not. Hospices have a special role to play. They are experts in this kind of care.”

Their comments reflect attitudes across the hospice sector, which finds itself in crisis as Britain’s hospices have an expected funding deficit of more than £77m for the current financial year.

This is despite legislation passed in 2022 which established regional health boards in England - part of new integrated care systems - and gave them the statutory duty to commission palliative and end of life care from local hospices.

It follows a report published earlier this year by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Hospice and End of Life Care which said the current system is “not fit for purpose”.

Ruth Driscoll, associate director for policy and public affairs for hospice charity Marie Curie, said: “Hospices are often given one year contracts rather than multi-year contracts, which makes it really difficult for them to plan services in a strategic and long-term way.

“The contracts are not being uplifted in line with inflation, but the cost of running those services is going up, because obviously they have to pay people more during the cost of living crisis. So there’s a mismatch between the rising cost of delivering these services and the amount of uplift in these contracts coming through from Integrated Care Boards.”