O-05 Lancashire South Cumbria hospices join forces for a bold new vision – you won’t believe what happens next!

Abstract

Lancashire South Cumbria is one of the most deprived areas of the country with some of the worst health outcomes. We also receive some of the lowest grant funding from the NHS. However, our communities deserve much better and they are demanding improvement. We know there is no silver bullet, white knight, magic formula or money tree. So our hospices decided to take matters into their own hands and work together. It has not been the easiest thing to do because previously we’ve competed and sometimes not got on. However, now all nine of the adult and children hospices in Lancashire and South Cumbria (LSC) have come together to form a new hospice provider collaborative that we call Lancashire South Cumbria Hospices Together (LSCHT). LSCHT are the new regional focus for end of life care and, in response to the NHS regional changes, we’ve jointly invested to make working with our hospices easier. We realise hospices are well represented at local and national levels, but that an ocean of opportunities exist from learning and working more closely with each other at a regional level. Of course, we also want excellent patient care, better finance settlements, more sustainable working practices and improved staff outcomes. Our story is about how we created a shared vision and jointly developed, funded and delivered our regional partnership, our successes and failures and future plans. How we infiltrated our ICB and made ‘Dying Well’ one of our five regional priorities.