Background At Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (DGFT) we have implemented the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) to support identification of patients in the last year of life and development an individual plan of care to support dying patients. A suite of measures and legacy work has been implemented together with the use of GSF to support earlier identification and support for patients dying in the hospital.

Method A GSF document is completed on the Trust electronic patient record for patients identified as GSF during their admission. A power BI system reports on the information collected including the percentage of deaths by ward and as a Trust that had been identified as GSF red or amber.

Results From 1.4.22 – 31.3.23 61% of hospital deaths were identified as GSF amber or red. This represents an increase from the previous year 1.4.21 – 31.3.22 52% of hospital deaths were identified as GSF red or AMBER. The power BI breaks this down by ward and reports on the number of deaths which also helps the wards implementing GSF to understand their patient population and any educational needs to ensure individual plan of care.

Conclusion Implementing the GSF across DGFT has had measurable impacts and the metrics collected provide assurance and demonstrate the improvements. So far eight wards have achieved GSF accreditation including critical care and coronary care which were both the first nationally. As a Specialist Palliative Care Team we aim to continue to support wards with the implementation of GSF and this data provides evidence for the wards and the Trust regarding the provision of end of life care which can be triangulated with other measures including incidents, compliments etc.