Katharine House Hospice Launches New Care Strategy

Katharine House Hospice has recently undertaken a review of its care services based on the needs of service users. The hospice engaged with staff, volunteers, healthcare professionals, patients, carers, supporters and other members of the public. The review highlighted how the hospice can best meet the needs of the community. A new care strategy influenced by the findings of the review has been launched.

Katharine House Hospice’s Chief Executive Richard Soulsby said:

 “Patients and their families are at the heart of everything we do and as a charity it is important that we make the most efficient use of our resources to provide the greatest benefit to them. We would like to thank those who took part in our review. Most participants felt that we should focus our resources on delivering support that no other organisation can locally. We are best placed to provide specialist palliative and end of life care and our respondents thought we should focus on this without duplicating services that might be accessed via other health and social care providers.”

The Care Strategy includes plans for new approaches to outpatient care as the hospice continues to respond to the specialist care needs of the community and aims to help more patients from diagnosis until the end of their life.

Katharine House Hospice Director of Care Neil Grannon, said:

“Our new approach will be more flexible and will allow us to adapt services around the needs of patients. This means that we can help more patients in a very personal way. Patients will be referred for particular treatments and therapies that meet the needs of the individual e.g. someone may need complementary therapies to help their anxiety, a meeting with a medical professional and a physio appointment over 3 sessions. We will be able to provide a more individual service for patients accessing our services.”

You can find out more about Katharine House Hospice’s future direction for its care services at www.khhospice.org.uk

Katharine House Hospice provides free care and support for adults and their families who are coping with progressive illness across mid-Staffordshire. It relies upon the kindness of the local community to help generate over 70% of the funds needed to run its vital range of services.

More information

For more information, interviews and/or photographs, please contact: Nigel Connor.