Each death which occurs outside an NHS hospital has been calculated to save the health system some £1,000 ($1,600) in England. On average, deaths which occur inside NHS hospitals cost the service around £3,065 (just under $5000), while those elsewhere cost £2,107 (around $3,400).
Doctors have been given bonuses for drawing up ‘end-of-life advanced care plans’ for patients they predict will die within a year.
The payments in question apparently have the intention of keeping NHS costs as low as possible.
According to documents seen by the Daily Mail on Sunday, a “key objective” of the project - which underwent a trial period in England’s east - was “to shift the place of death” away from hospitals, thus “reducing ...healthcare costs.”
“I think it’s got everything to do with money, with the cost of a hospital bed being £200 a day,” Dr Anthony Cole, acting chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, told the paper. He stated his belief that its advocates were mired in financial concerns, and suggested that it may result in insufficient medical care in a patient’s final days.
The ‘Yellow Folder’ pilot scheme was trialed in 41 medical practices in Ipswich and East Suffolk, and lasted from July 2011 until last month. The doctors received payment for every care home patient they successfully signed up to an end of life plan. Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which ran the scheme, would not tell the paper how much money it allocated for bonuses.
Patients on the program were required to state their preferred location of death, whether they would like to be resuscitated, and their preferred drugs for the final hours of their life.
An NHS ‘Call to Action’ pack, available on the trust’s website, cited a “growing population with more complex needs” as one of the main issues facing British healthcare. It stated that the “number of people with multiple long term conditions [is] set to grow from 1.9 to 2.9 million from 2008 to 2018.”
However, people behind the development of the scheme have cited the primary motivation to be to give patients a more comfortable death. According to surveys cited by the Mail, 66 percent of people would prefer to be at home at the end of their lives, whereas only 43 percent actually do, on account of the majority being admitted to hospital.
On Thursday, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that senior members of Britain’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, said that the NHS is being faced with bankruptcy, as it will become unable to cope with Britain’s aging population. One member reportedly called the system a “demographic time bomb.”
NHS cost-cutting has been making waves in the British press over the past few days. On Saturday, it emerged that some patients are being transported to hospitals in police cars because of a massive shortage of ambulances. On Sunday, the head of England's Accident and Emergency departments said that a lack of available consultants during weekends posed a risk to patients.
Critics argue that the scheme could cause patients to be denied important medical treatment. Three months ago, the paper published a report documenting how ambulance crews can choose whether to transport people to hospital if they have stated on their ‘care plan’ that they would like to die at home.
Source: Russia Today
MNA
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