Financial Inducements To NHS Trusts
Under figures gained from a 2012 freedom of information request by The Daily Telegraph, 85 per cent of NHS trusts were revealed to have adopted the Liverpool Care Pathway. Just over half of the total of NHS trusts have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so. At many hospitals more than 50 per cent of all patients who died had been placed on the pathway and in one case the proportion of foreseeable deaths on the pathway was almost nine out of 10.
According to responses from a sample of 72 trusts, at least £12.4 million had been paid out in the two to three years to 2012 to trusts which hit targets associated with use of the care pathway. Overall 61 of NHS trusts which responded to the survey said that they used the pathway, translating to 85 per cent of the total. Of those, 62 per cent disclosed that they had either received, or expect to receive, cash rewards for meeting targets associated with the implementation of the pathway. The remainder said they had adopted the LCP without receiving any payments.
Under a system known as “Commissioning for Quality and Innovation” (CQUIN), local NHS commissioners pay trusts for meeting targets to “reward excellence” in care. Targets vary from area to area but in some cases trusts are given specific targets to ensure that a set number of people who die in their hospital are on the LCP. In response to the survey, a handful of trusts openly spoke of either hitting or missing targets connected to the LCP in their responses.
The Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - which received £81,000 in 2010 for meeting targets relating to the LCP - said the proportion of patients whose deaths were expected and had been placed on the pathway more than doubled to 87.7 from 2011 to 2012. The Bradford teaching Hospitals trust, which qualified for CQUIN payments of more than £490,000 from 2010 to 2012, saw the number of patients dying on the pathway more than double to 51 per cent from 2009 to 2012.
Read more about this topic: Liverpool Care Pathway For The Dying Patient
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