The past few months have seen a hive of activity related to the publishing of reports and documents in the UK. July heralded the arrival of the long-awaited final report on the Palliative Care Funding Review (Hughes-Hallett et al, 2011).The figures are breathtaking: 457000 people are estimated to need palliative care every year in the UK, but around 92 000 receive very little or none. In addition, there is a wide chasm between different Primary Care Trusts' spending on this specialist area of care. Reference is made to 'stunning inequalities', which is too often a common theme of our 'postcode lottery' culture.
展开▼
