Dear Editor
Hospice funding is in crisis. Hospices in Scotland provide dignified care for around 21,000 patients and their families every year, but are struggling enormously.
Hospices are a key part of the health and care system, but we aren’t part of the NHS.
We are charities that rely on generous donations and fundraising to employ thousands of nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, counsellors, and support staff.
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When NHS salaries rise, hospices face the extra costs, but aren’t covered by the government pay awards. This is grossly unfair.
This year alone, salaries have risen by 5.5% for NHS clinical and support staff and 10.5% for consultant doctors.
For hospices, matching this is near impossible.
The cost of heating, transport and supplies has soared. From April, the National Insurance hikes alone will add a further £2.5m to hospices’ wage bill.
And the share of NHS funding for hospices is declining. Scottish hospices face an insurmountable funding gap.
Hospice care is always free. There is now a risk that, for the first time ever, hospices will have to turn people away.
Cutting services is the last thing any of us want to do. It would break our hearts. We promise to do everything we can to avoid that, but we also have to balance the books.
It doesn’t have to be like this. The Scottish budget is an opportunity for our political parties to forge a new course.
Hospices are the core of palliative care, not just a place people go to die.
Our dedicated staff work in hospices, in patients’ homes, NHS hospitals and other care settings. They help people live for whatever time they have remaining.
They provide specialist education and training to NHS colleagues. They prevent many people being admitted to hospital, and help others to die with dignity in their home or a hospice.
They support families in grief and help them recover.
Supporting hospices is not only the right thing to do for patients and families; it is the right thing to do for the health care system. Hospice care reduces pressure on our overstretched NHS.
With sustainable hospice funding, people’s experience of death and dying in Scotland could be transformed. The Scottish Parliament can help us do that.
Ahead of the Scottish Government Budget in December, we are urgently calling for cross-party consensus on sustainable hospice funding, so care at the end of life is as it should be and everyone has access to palliative care where and when they need it.
Decision-makers can’t let this opportunity to support these vital services pass by.
- Jacki Smart, Chief Executive, Accord Hospice
- Sister Rita Dawson MBE, Chief Executive, St Margaret’s Hospice of Scotland
- Gordon McHugh, Chief Executive, Kilbryde Hospice
- Tracy Flynn, Chief Executive, Ayrshire Hospice
- Rami Okasha, Chief Executive, CHAS
- Gillian Green, Chief Executive, St Vincent’s Hospice
- Joy Farquharson, Chief Executive, St Andrew’s Hospice
- Mags McCarthy, Chief Executive, Strathcarron Hospice
- Jackie Stone, Chief Executive, St Columba’s Hospice
- Graham Gardiner, Chief Executive, Ardgowan Hospice
- Carol Somerville, Chief Executive, Bethesda Hospice
- Libby Milton and Amy Dalrymple, Associate Directors, Marie Curie Scotland
- Rhona Baillie, Chief Executive, Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice
- Kenny Steele, Chief Executive, Highland Hospice
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