Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Jane Maher's editorial on the Palliative Care Funding Review gives it a broad welcome. The initiative aims to create a per-patient mechanism to meet the needs of the approximately 457 000 people who need palliative care every year in England. Drawing on the Australian experience, the review goes a long way in designing a transparent system to assign resources to patients at the end of life. We are looking forward to seeing the ideas piloted, not least because the estimates of the cost of care at the end of life vary by such a wide margin throughout the country; £186–£6213 being the range of average spends by primary care trusts. However, we should not forget the results of a recent survey into the expenses associated with a death in the family. When all is added up, including the funeral and legal services, families in the UK now face an average bill of about £7200. So if dying sounds expensive, being dead is certainly no cheaper.
Following some controversy in the press last year, over the way the Liverpool …