Palliative Care — House of Commons, 2015-11-04
Topic: Health
Maria Colette Caulfield (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman. I absolutely agree. That point is picked up in the Bill The most shocking statistic concerns the diseases that people are suffering from. The London School of Economics says that 92,000 people a year miss out on palliative care help. At the moment, 88% of our palliative care provision goes to people with cancer. As a cancer nurse, I am certainly not saying that that needs to be reduced, but the majority of deaths are due to other diseases. Only 29% of people die of cancer, with 28% of deaths due to heart disease, 15% due to respiratory illnesses, 10% due to stroke, not to mention Alzheimer’s disease, motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis. Until we ensure that palliative care provision is mainstream, and not just for patients with cancer, the majority of people will be denied access to a good death The Bill introduced in the other place comes up with solutions to resolve this situation and place the responsibility firmly in the hands of local clinical commissioning groups to ensure that all patients, no matter where they want to die or what disease they have, will get access to palliative care services. That will take the pressure off existing acute facilities that are currently having to provide them. The Bill makes some key practical proposals. The first is about the ability to admit people directly to palliative care facilities. This happens really well in a lot of places, but it does not happen everywhere. That goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about investing in our hospices to ensure that it can happen more widely. The Bill talks about support for healthcare professionals in all settings, so that whether they are an intensive care unit nurse or someone who works with motor neurone disease, they have a signposted facility to access specialist palliative care that helps them to help patients manage their symptoms. The Bill fits very firmly into the Government’s seven-days-a-week NHS in calling for the availability of seven-days-a-week palliative care services. As I know only too well, it is at 4.30 pm on a Friday that a patient will phone up in pain and say they cannot cope, when pharmacies are closed and it is possible to get a prescription but not a drug. Someone who is breathless and needs a chest drain often has to wait until the Monday morning, in the meantime being admitted to A&E or a medical assessment unit and then finding it very difficult to be discharged to go home. This is why we need a seven-days-a-week palliative care service The Bill calls for some really basic things that should exist now but do not, such as sufficient equipment for our community services. It is unbelievable that a ward nurse who wants to discharge someone with a morphine pump cannot do so because the pump belongs to the hospital. Unless the community has a spare pump, that patient will not go home. That is why only 30% of people are dying at home—they are stuck in hospital because communities do not have the necessary equipment to look after patients. There are shortages of mattresses and feeding pumps, which would make a crucial difference if they were available.