We know very little about the costs of specialist palliative care provision in the UK

The inclusion of specialist palliative care in the Health and Social Care Bill for England is welcome but overdue. As Oliver notes, many challenges also remain before consistent provision and access can be assured.1 These include implementation, prioritisation, and, crucially, resourcing of specialist palliative care.Despite a growing evidence base, we know very little about the costs of specialist palliative care provision in the United Kingdom. In our 2016 systematic review we identified only 10 papers that presented data on the costs of a palliative care approach in the UK.2 The identified studies showed such substantial variation in their estimates of the cost of palliative care that it was not possible to present an accurate aggregate cost.A more recent report for the charity Sue Ryder projected future demand and costs for providing specialist palliative care but acknowledged the uncertainty inherent in any cost analysis, due to the complexity and inconsistency of…
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