What do we know now that we didn’t know a year ago?

Published four years ago, the End of Life Care Strategy made clear the need to know more about the care people receive in their last year or months of life. With the creation of the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network in 2010, we began to address previous limitations of lack of information.

We now combine Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on end of life care, and are working to link this with local authority data on the social care people receive at the end of life. This is giving us a clearer understanding than ever before of end of life care across the country. Reassuringly,
we now know where our efforts are making a real difference; however we also now know where we need to do a lot more to make substantial improvements.

The publication of this report marks a significant moment in the progress of the strategy. The knowledge contained within it will enable commissioners and providers