The Myton Hospices has adopted a patient reported outcome measure, the Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale (IPOS), to advance our commitment to providing a holistic approach to patients and their families.

Until recent years hospices have relied on measuring activity and processes, such as the number of beds or numbers of patients seen to demonstrate their outputs.

Feedback from patient and their loved one’s about their experiences are vitally important, but they need robust ways of ensuring that they are providing the best possible care and making a meaningful difference to the whole community.

It can be challenging to measure the impact of palliative and end of life care for many reasons. Hospice services are all about improving quality of life, even in the face of disease that is progressing.

Furthermore, it’s for not just about caring for the patient, but also those close to them. Holistic care involves complex interventions from many different professionals and often over a period of several weeks or months.

Having been introduced a few years ago by NHS England, the IPOS now plays a pivotal role in our overall approach, enabling us to further improve the quality of care and reliably evaluate the impact of what we do.

Specialist Doctor at The Myton Hospices, Dr Nicky Baker, explains:

“It is all about ensuring we deliver the right care to the right people at the right time and helping us to find ways to do that even better.”

The scale works by asking patients to score a set of questions covering physical symptoms, psychological concerns, level of spiritual distress and social issues, but more importantly focuses on those symptoms and concerns that matter most to the patient.

Dr Nicky adds:

By reviewing patient’s responses every week, we ensure we work effectively as a team to address the things that are most significant to the people we look after.

Many of them have multiple symptoms or concerns that are having a significant impact on their ability to live as fulfilling a life as possible, with pain, weakness, poor mobility, anxiety and family worries affecting more than two-thirds of all our inpatients.

What we are also able to demonstrate is that Myton really does make a difference to reduce the impact of all of these concerns on people’s quality of life.

Just as an example, 40% of patients coming into the hospice have pain that is rapidly escalating and they describe as severe or overwhelming.

Spending time in the hospice means that the majority of these patients have an improvement in their pain, and 50% tell us their pain is reduced to little or none.

We are now looking at ways to use the data to further evaluate and improve the effectiveness of our current offerings.

This strategic move ensures that efforts are directed towards areas that will most benefit patients and their families across Coventry and Warwickshire.