St Ann’s Hospice (SAH) introduced the Rehabilitative Palliative Care Standards to benchmark and implement changes using a QI approach. A proposal was successfully submitted to our lead CCG to undertake this piece of work as a two year CQUIN. The CQUIN came to an end at the end of 2021/22.

The Hospice UK Rehabilitative Palliative Care approach to care (Tiberini & Richardson, 2015) is based on national best practice guidelines, and is part of a national move towards a rehabilitative approach to palliative care. It is a quality measure that will lead to service improvement and allow for better use of resources. This will be based around four main areas: patient priorities and preferences, responding to the challenges of the future, evidence based practice, economic value.

The overall aim of the project was for SAH to formally adopt the rehabilitative approach to palliative care and embed it into strategy and daily practice in order to deliver truly world class palliative and end of life care.

To achieve the aim and implement and embed the delivery of rehabilitative palliative care on the in-patient units from a baseline score of 40% to 75% using the HUK Rehabilitative Palliative Care benchmarking checklist as a measure by March 2022.

A quality improvement approach was taken, which incorporated organisational engagement at all levels, and the identification of key internal and external stakeholders. A quarterly report was produced and presented at the CCG contract meeting, and internal Clinical Performance and Quality Committee. The start of the project was delayed slightly due to COVID-19, however, anecdotally we have seen changes to practice, a reduction in length of stay, a change in culture and the use of language by our MDT, and have received positive feedback from staff, patients and their families. The final benchmarking will be completed in July 2022.