Nurses at a hospice in the West Midlands have been told their jobs are at risk, after the organisation announced it was making 14% of its workforce redundant due to extreme budget pressures.
Birmingham Hospice, formerly The Hospice Charity Partnership, announced this week that an estimated £2.4m budget deficit and “unsustainable rising costs” meant it had been “forced” to make significant staff reductions.
“All we can hope is that, after the election, we will see a sensible discussion on the future of hospice care”
Simon Fuller
The equivalent of 45 full-time roles are being made redundant in the upcoming job cuts. The hospice confirmed that these roles include clinicians. But it is not clear how many nursing positions are at risk.
As well as the workforce cuts, Birmingham Hospice will also decrease its total inpatient beds from 24 to 16, a reduction of eight at each of its two sites.
Hospice chief executive Simon Fuller said the reductions were “unpalatable” and that they came as a result of a funding crisis in the sector.
“Birmingham Hospice has been working with Hospice UK and other hospices nationally to seek support to address the financial challenges across the sector,” he said.
Most hospices, including this one, have to raise significant proportions of their running costs through fundraising, donations and other independent sources.
For example, Birmingham Hospice, which runs John Taylor Hospice and St Mary’s Hospice, has to raise £6.5m per year – equivalent to £55,335 per day – itself.
Significant increases in the cost of energy, food, drugs – as well as staff costs – have meant many hospices are under strain with fundraising alone not being able to compensate.
Despite demands from the sector, UK Government funding of hospice care has not matched the increases in their running costs.
In Wales, the devolved administration recently announced a £4m funding package to keep its 12 hospices going.
The issue, particularly for England, was raised in a recent parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee report into assisted dying, in which it was acknowledged that palliative care needed more resources from central government to keep up with demand.
Mr Fuller said these issues made redundancies, like those happening at his organisation, unavoidable with the local integrated care board (ICB) – which has responsibility over plugging funding gaps – itself suffering a shortfall and unable to help.
“The problem has been discussed in parliament; but the current administration has passed the problem to local commissioners who have not been able to provide,” he said.
“There is a growing need for palliative and end of life care and the NHS is unable to meet the huge demands on its beds.
“Most people do not want to die in hospital and hospices provide outstanding services that support people to die in a place of their choosing,” he noted.
The chief executive further aired hopes that the next government, the make up of which will be decided in next week’s general election, would take action to stop more job cuts in palliative care.
He added: “Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, outlined at the NHS ConfedExpo in June how better end of life care in the community could free up NHS bed spaces equivalent to building three new hospitals.
“If this is to be realised, then surely better funding of hospice services is a must. All we can hope is that, after the election, we will see a sensible discussion on the future of hospice care.”
The hospice said it would continue to campaign for better funding for the hospice sector.
Dawn Ward, chair of its board of trustees acknowledged the impact the redundancies would have, both on the staff who are losing their jobs and on patients across the system.
“The hospice sector helps to take pressure off the NHS by supporting those with a terminal diagnosis as inpatients or in the community,” she said.
“If hospices are forced to reduce the number of people they can help, that will mean longer stays and delayed discharges from the acute sector, causing longer waits for treatment elsewhere.
“Inequitable funding for hospices not only denies patients and families access to that specialist care and support when they need it most; it also inevitably increases demand on an already overstretched NHS.”
She said the reduction in local hospice capacity would mean waiting lists in the area will increase.