Severn Hospice to reduce beds at Telford site as NHS funding is cut

The charity is to close two beds from its in-patient centre in Telford following the decision by Telford & Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group to cut funding by 25 per cent.

The cut will leave a £250,000 hole in the charity's budget, and bosses have accused the organisation of letting down the people it is supposed to serve.

Severn Hospice chief executive Heather Palin said the cuts would not save the taxpayer a single penny, as the patients would instead have to be cared for in hospital.

She said: “In stark terms someone who is dying might now face their death somewhere in a hospital rather than in a hospice.

"It will cost the Clinical Commissioning Group considerably more than its grant to us to care for that same patient in Princess Royal Hospital.

Decade

"By saving 25 per cent of the grant they pay to us, they will have to bear 100 per cent of the impact on their budget and resources elsewhere. And the best care the hospital could possibly provide among all its other priorities will not be anything like the dedicated support we can give patients and their families."

She said the hospice could no longer absorb continued cuts to its funding after a decade of year-on-year real-term reductions.

"We now have no choice but to close at least two beds in our Telford hospice," she added.

“We feel all our efforts over many months to engage and discuss the potential impact of these funding cuts with the CCG have not been heard and we are fearful on behalf of all future patients in Telford & Wrekin that these cuts signal a longer-term risk to the quality of end of life care in the county."

Severn Hospice spends £11 million a year on running costs, operating inpatient hospices at Apley Castle in Telford, and Bicton Heath in Shrewsbury.

The cuts will affect in-patient services at Telford only. Plans for a £5 million expansion of community-base services, which will see extensions built at both its Telford and Shrewsbury bases, are unaffected.