Hospices under significant cost pressure – A Landmark Report shows the real value of hospices to health system

Through providing free, end-of-life care to thousands of New Zealanders every year, local hospices are providing taxpayers at least $1.59 in health benefits for every dollar of government funding, a landmark report released today has found.   

However, the study, Sustainable Funding for Hospice Services, by leading public sector and economic specialists Martin Jenkins, highlighted that while New Zealand’s 28 publicly funded hospices relieve pressure on the national health system, particularly through fewer hospital admissions and Emergency Department visits, they were operating under unprecedented financial strain.

Tina McCafferty, Chief Executive of Tōtara Hospice and part of a hospice collective that commissioned the Report, said that the sector faced escalating costs as it dealt with an increasingly ageing population and patients requiring more complex palliative care.

Axing National Palliative Care Roles A Backward Step

There is no escaping the fact that 100% of us are going to die, and when it inevitably happens, we all deserve to die well.  Health NZ has just two people working on a national strategy to address this fundamental healthcare right.  Now their jobs are proposed to be cut. 

Read this Sunday Star Times Opinion Piece by Wayne Naylor about how disastrous this proposal will be for dying people in Aotearoa.