Case study:

23 November 2010

Expansion to the geographical area covered by St Catherine’s Hospice in Surrey

Key points

St Catherine’s Hospice in Crawley has, in collaboration with NHS Surrey, extended its service to the whole of East Surrey following the closure of the previous specialist palliative care service run by Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The expansion, which was planned over a 10-week period, involved a 30% increase in the hospice’s community workload with St Catherine’s becoming the local hospice for an extra 120,000 people as a result.

The aim was to introduce the changes with minimal disruption to staff and patients while using existing and new staff effectively. Surveys suggest that most staff felt the transfer went well and the integration of staff from two different organisations was successful

Plans to expand services from the hospice’s existing remit of West Sussex and Horley, Dorking and parts of Redhill and Reigate began at the start of 2009. A working party, which included NHS Surrey commissioners, senior clinicians and the chief executive from St Catherine’s Hospice, NHS Surrey community staff and GP and user representatives, agreed the service specifications and outcome measures for the following three years.

Preparations for taking over from Marie Curie Cancer Care included:

• Planning for the transfer of paper-based clinical records of patients under the care of the previous provider to the hospice’s electronic patient record
• Finding and refurbishing premises in Caterham in order to retain locally delivered day services – a particular priority for the users of the existing service
• Transfer of staff employment to St Catherine’s
• Communication with professionals and patients.

All these changes were completed within 10 weeks and St Catherine’s began to provide its community service across the whole of East Surrey on 1 April 2009.

A key to the success of the project was the ongoing dialogue between commissioner and providers with a clear project plan and agreed schedule of meetings.

A survey of existing St Catherine’s staff and new colleagues from Marie Curie several months after the transfer showed that over 90% of respondents felt that the transfer had gone well given the time constraints. A central theme in staff comments was that of continuity of care for patients and recognition of the work involved to transfer a large amount of patient data quickly while remaining within data protection requirements. 89% of respondents believed that the integration of new staff went well.