Poll: Should social care be free when patients begin to reach the end of life?
Free social care should be provided at the end of life so that no one dies in hospital for want of a package of support, a review into palliative care by MPs has said.
The report by the Health Select Committee looks at the state of palliative care since the independent review of the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).
The LCP, which recommended that in some circumstances doctors withdraw treatment, food and water from sedated patients in their final hours or days, was scrapped in 2013 after the review panel discovered appalling cases of care with some patients left on it for weeks.
Today's report found there are still unacceptable levels of variation in care that people receive and makes a number of recommendations for improvement, in particular that free social care be provided at the end of life.
It said most people who express a preference say they would like to die at home, but this is made difficult by the shortfall in community nurses and specialist outreach palliative care.
MPs concluded that round-the-clock access to specialist palliative care in acute and community settings would greatly improve the way that people who are seriously ill - and their families and carers - are treated.
They also said sustainable, long-term funding for the hospice sector needs to be addressed along with recognition of the importance of the voluntary sector, while bereavement support for families should be included as part of end of life care.
