End of life care for people with dementia
This commissioning guide provides support for the local implementation of NICE clinical guidelines through commissioning, and is a resource to help statutory and voluntary health and social care professionals in England to commission integrated end of life care (EOLC) services for people with dementia.
The guide is targeted at health and social care professionals responsible for commissioning dementia services and/or EOLC services. However, it is also recommended that links are set up with commissioners who lead on a range of other conditions which often present in people with dementia, such as learning disabilities and comorbidities. These include cancer, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease and other long-term conditions. This commissioning guide should be read together with the following NICE guidance and national strategies:
- NICE clinical guideline CG42 Dementia: A NICE-SCIE Guideline on supporting people with dementia and their carers in health and social care
- Living well with dementia: A National Dementia Strategy
- End of Life Care Strategy from the Department of Health
The clinical guideline covers clinical and cost effectiveness in detail and underpins the content of this guide. Implementation of the guidance noted above is the responsibility of local commissioners and/or providers. Commissioners and providers are reminded that it is their responsibility to implement this guidance, in their local context, in light of their duties to avoid unlawful discrimination and to have regard to promoting equality of opportunity. Nothing in the guidance should be interpreted in a way which would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
The guide:
- makes the case for commissioning EOLC for people with dementia
- specifies service requirements
- helps you determine local service levels
- helps you ensure corporate and quality assurance.
The full text of this commissioning guide is accessed from the navigation menu on the right hand side of the screen. The associated commissioning/benchmarking tool is freely available and can be downloaded.
We are keen to improve the commissioning guides in order to better meet the needs of commissioners. Please send us your ideas for future topic-specific guides or other comments.
Read the NICE disclaimer for information on the use and accuracy of content on the NICE website.
This page was last updated: 02 March 2012
- End of life care for people with dementia
- Commissioning end of life care for people with dementia
- Specifying end of life care for people with dementia
- Determining local service levels for end of life care for people with dementia
- Assumptions used in estimating a population benchmark
- The commissioning and benchmarking tool
- Ensuring corporate and quality assurance
