‘Best Practice in care coordination for palliative and end of life care services: information for commissioners’

 ‘Best Practice in care coordination for palliative and end of life care services: information for commissioners’ is an information resource to support commissioners in designing and contracting optimal care coordination systems for their local areas. The resource is aligned to Ambition Four of ‘Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care: A national framework for local action 2015–2020’ and should be taken in the context of NHS England’s Commissioning Toolkit for End of Life Care.

Coordinating care around the individual is essential to good end of life care. It ensures people receive the right care, at the right time and in the right place. It means that people feel listened to, that they have greater choice and control over their own care, and that there are fewer unwanted hospital admissions.

Following on from a desktop review carried out by NHS England, NCPC reviewed 66 palliative and end of life care co-ordination systems with the aim of identifying good practice systems for providing effective care coordination in this area of care.

Each system was rated on whether it met the five building blocks within the fourth ambition in the Ambitions framework (for care to be effectively coordinated) and to what extent it had been evaluated - the systems that scored highest all shared a number of core features (all of which are outlined in the publication).

Building on the good practice examples, the resource provides a step-by-step practical approach to support commissioners to plan, design, commission and evaluate optimal end of life care coordination systems for their local areas.

The guide – which was developed through consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, including commissioners, health care professionals, and people working in the voluntary sector and social care – is now available on the Ambitions Knowledge HUB.

We are hopeful that the document will help identify and develop optimal systems for providing effective care coordination that will improve people’s experience, choice and quality of care at the end of life. We’d be very grateful if you would share it widely via your networks.