Greenwich Care Partnership Launch
12 May 2011
A new service partnership between Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust has been launched. The new Greenwich Care Partnership, was officially launched on International Nurses Day, Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
The Greenwich Care Partnership is a new integrated service that operates alongside and supports existing core services such as GPs and District Nurses to provide high quality care for patients with end of life care needs in the London Borough of Greenwich. The service aims to reduce inappropriate hospital admissions and enable more patients to be cared for and to die in their place of choice.
The partnership, which is the first of its kind in South East London, results from Marie Curie Cancer Care’s Delivering Choice Programme in South East London, a service redesign programme which aims to help local care providers and commissioners to develop the best care and support services for people at the end of life, their families and carers.
The new integrated nurse-led service aims to put dying people (aged 18 or over) and their families at the centre of care, empowering patients and their carers to stay at home (if that is what they wish) and supporting them around the clock by providing health care assistants to provide help with personal care, short breaks for carers and practical tasks.
A new Rapid Response Service will also mean registered nurses will be available from 4 pm – 8 am, 7 days/nights a week on the end of the telephone or to visit people should they need support, advice or nursing care, enabling responsive end of life care in the community during the out of hours period. It is hoped that this new service will enable more people to be cared for in their place of choice and reduce unnecessary and often distressing hospital admissions.
Another facet to the service includes a new Palliative Care Coordination Centre, ensuring seamless coordinated care for patients and their carers, as well as a new 24/7 single contact number to enable them to have direct access to services and support.
Carla Rattigan, Lead Nurse, Greenwich Care Partnership said: “The service, which will be provided for people at the end of life, will support them at this most difficult time in their lives, putting them at the centre of their care, but taking the stress of making sure that their care is coordinated away from them so that they can get the most out of the time that they have left.”
The service is available to people with a variety of life-limiting conditions such as cancer, dementia, motor neurone disease, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, in the last year of life.
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