KING’S LYNN: Hospital chiefs reject pathway cash ‘bonus’ claim
Hospital chiefs say a payment relating to the use of a controversial palliative care treatment was not an “incentive”.
Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital received £225,000 Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUINS) money from the primary care trust or the Liverpool Care Pathway in 2011 and 2012.
The pathway was developed to help terminally ill patients by withdrawing treatment but it has recently come under fire.
Director of patient experience Gwyneth Wilson said the hospital received the money for its quality of care.
The payment included the costs associated with recruiting additional specialist staff to train nursing and medical teams in the appropriate use of the treatment plan and development of an associated administration system.
Ms Wilson said: “The payment is made on the condition that we have achieved an agreed level of quality in our standards of care. It is categorically not an incentive payment for identifying patients to commence end of life care.
“The Liverpool Care Pathway is a nationally-agreed standard for end of life care devised by hospices. It allows acute hospitals to offer the same high level of care that patients with a terminal illness would expect if they chose to spend their final days in a hospice.
“Introducing the LCP in our trust involved recruitment of two specialist nurses who were then able to introduce an extensive training programme for doctors and nurses throughout the trust.”
The CQUINS system introduced in 2009 to make a proportion of hospital’s income conditional on demonstrating improvements in quality and innovation in specified areas of care.
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 19 May 2013
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