What we said to the Mid Cycle Scrutiny Committee Briefing

3 November 2023

Tony Collins

Three hospices serving North Yorkshire and York; St Catherine’s based in Scarborough, St. Leonard’s based in York and Saint Michael’s and Herriot Hospices (merged) based in Harrogate and Thirsk.  Providing a range of end of life and palliative services including; specialist inpatient beds, community based end of life care, outpatient clinics, lymphoedema services and bereavement counselling and support.

The total cost of providing these services across the three hospices is circa £20m and we received NHS funding of £5.6m as a contribution to this, which is 27% and leaves us £14.8m to raise through fundraising.

Four to five years ago the NHS funding was between 35-40% of total service costs.  The funding gap is widening rapidly with no extra funding to follow the nurse salary increases and only 1.8% inflationary increase against our costs rising in excess of 7.5%.  As three hospices we have asked for an increase in funding and been told no.  This is now moving us quickly towards the possibility of needing to close some of our services.

Other issues in the funding from the NHS is the inequity of the funding model.  Example given of the community based services being funded according to four different funding models across the three hospices.

Bereavement services receive no NHS funding across the three hospices.