Monday 5 November 2012

Liverpool Care Pathway – Surprise, Surprise?

This  from -

WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY 2011

LIVERPOOL CARE PATHWAY - A GRAVE AND PERILOUS PATHWAY

The Department of Health (DOH) uses a Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) payment framework which enables commissioners to reward excellence by linking a proportion of providers’ income to the achievement of local quality improvement goals:
"It makes a small proportion of provider income (0.5% of contract value in 2009/10) conditional on achievement of locally agreed goals around quality improvement and innovation. It is intended that goals should be stretching but realistic."
CQUIN has set targets for 2011/2012 with regard to the End of Life program.

The forward plan is to increase the number of patients identified to be on the end of life care pathway and from a baseline of 0% to 20%; it is further planned to have 30% of all patients who die in hospital dying on the Liverpool Care Pathway.

To ensure they receive their provider income in fulll, Trusts have to comply with or exceed these goals. Some, like Royal Brompton, have upped the plan expectations:
1) 95% of patients identified as end of life (last 48 hours of life for expected deaths) are offered an EOL care planning discussion
2) 80% of patients offered a discussion should have an advanced care plan
3) 98% of patients who have an advanced care plan should have a record of the decision to resuscitate stated clearly in the notes
4) 50% of patients who die in hospital (expected deaths) should die on a Liverpool care pathway 
It is the DOH which is the driving force behind rolling out  LCP across the NHS!

From 'cradle to grave' was the promise. Cradle to grave has become a bit of a stretch with the pressure of the financial constraints involved. (It's that bit in-between that's the problem!)

Putting pressure on clinicians to identify patients as 'dying' to place them on LCPsimply to achieve these DOH targets is fraught with peril! Clinicians will be hounded, against their better judgement, by cash-strapped Trust's business and finance managers to meet targets in order to sustain funding.

A 'high quality' life cannot be guaranteed but, by golly, they're going to make darned sure we all get a 'high quality' death!

Mr Lamb cannot have been unaware of this, so why is everyone expressing such surprise...?

This today from The Telegraph -



Liverpool Care Pathway: minister orders report into cash rewards

A Minister has ordered an internal investigation into the use of payments to hospitals for getting terminally ill patients onto a controversial care “pathway” to death.

Norman Lamb has ordered an internal investigation into the use of payments to hospitals for getting terminally ill patients onto a controversial care “pathway” to death.

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