End-of-life care charity loses Lincolnshire contract

Marie Curie Healthcare Assistants will no longer provide specialist overnight end-of-life care in Lincolnshire homes.

NHS Lincolnshire’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) informed Marie Curie that their service contract will not be renewed, a decision described as “concerning and worrying”.

The ICB have designed a new delivery system to look after end-of-life care patients across Lincolnshire.

“We are a specialist end of life care provider which comes with a huge amount of expertise with looking after distressed patients, relatives and families," said Sue Morgan from Marie Curie in Lincolnshire.

"Coming with that is the quality of care that we provide. We are quite concerned and worried that the quality will just disappear,"

“There will be care available so in terms of the patients and families, they won't be going without care. It's just not a specialised, expert provider of end-of-life care. It will be a more generalist provider.”

The charity, which provided end of life care to 247 people in Lincolnshire last year, have requested a two-month extension from the ICB to ensure continuity of care.

Marie Curie will continue to provide its rapid response service across Lincolnshire, and says there has been no indication from the ICB that this is under threat.

“That's an overnight service that operates between 8:00pm and 8:00am. It’s a team of registered nurses and healthcare assistants that go out in urgent circumstances.

"So there will be care available and there will be urgent care available. But it will not be the planned, more sustained element that Marie Curie provide.”

The ICB said in a statement they are "committed to ensuring the delivery of high-quality palliative and end-of-life care for residents throughout Lincolnshire.

"We have been discussing over the last two years with Marie Curie how they could work alongside other providers to achieve this objective,

"We are disappointed that, despite ongoing dialogue, we have been unable to agree a delivery model and arrangement that includes the Marie Curie night service being part of the integrated whole system service for our patients."