Welcome to the Summer 2023 newsletter from Supportive Care UK. As always, we've been pretty busy since we were last in touch; here's what's been going on, and what's coming up in the months ahead.

Excellent feedback from the CQC

We were recently inspected for the first time by the CQC, a process which included a site visit and the submission of a great deal of evidence. We were delighted to be rated as good overall, with an outstanding rating for our responsiveness to people's needs, and positive feedback including:"The service planned and provided an innovative model of care to meet the needs of local people and the communities served. The service had recognised gaps within private healthcare in regard to patients accessing specialist palliative and supportive care. It also worked with others in the wider system and local organisations to plan care."Here are our Nurse Director Paula Hall's reflections on the inspection experience:"I was told the inspection was happening at 8:30 in the morning whilst on a dog walk before starting a day working from home. The inspector and specialist advisor who attended the site visit were approachable and very friendly, and put us all at ease during this rather stressful process. I was so proud of our small team's ability to highlight our outstanding work and our unique approach to supportive and palliative care hospital-based services." You can download the full report here.

A flexible way to boost your provision

We have recently offered 'bolt-on' flexible contracts for two of our partners, The Good Shepherd Hospice in Chester and the Strathcarron Hospice near Glasgow. These run alongside their foundation contracts, and make it easy for them to scale their provision up and down, as and when they need to. The team at The Good Shepherd are taking advantage of this flexibility to boost their existing OOH rota from time to time, and the Strathcarron team are relying on it to help them navigate last-minute and emergency gaps in provision.If you would like to explore building some additional flexibility into your arrangement with us, please get in touch. We'd be happy to work out a solution.

We're delighted to welcome two new palliative care providers into the SCUK family.

Two of our consultants are supporting the East London NHS Trust's palliative care team, with twice-weekly case reviews and daytime on-call advice.

And we're providing 24/7 telephone support and advice to the team at Cleveland Clinic London Hospital, in Belgravia, who have recognised a need for specialist support within their palliative and supportive care provision.

New relationships and new ideas from the Palliative Care Conference

Our Medical Director Professor Matt Makin, CEO Charlotte Healey, and Operations Manager Lauren Brown, represented SCUK at the Palliative Care Conference in Edinburgh in the spring. They enjoyed meeting up with many of our current partners, as well as starting conversations with other medical professionals, which we hope will lead to new, mutually beneficial relationships.

Matt also got involved in several speaker events, including managing a seminar on how best to support medical directors. We are using the insights he gained from this session to draft a proposal for a new leadership programme, which we hope to run across the UK; if you would like to be involved, please get in touch.

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