Why is early identification important in palliative and end of life care?

Early identification of patients who may be in the last 12 months of their life is important because this gives people the opportunity to be involved in planning for their future care.  This could include thinking about the type of care they would like or would not like, where they would like to be cared for, who should be involved in their care and can help with planning for loved ones.

What are we doing to support professionals?

The EARLY toolkit includes a clinical search tool along with a suite of resources to support implementation. The toolkit can be found on Cheshire ePaige or Future NHS. The clinical search tool can be run in EMIS, SystmOne and Vision Web.

The tool was developed in the North West in collaboration with colleagues in NE London.  It works within GP electronic patient records to help identify people who are likely to be in their last year of life. It searches Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMEDCT) codes based on a range of prognostic indicator guidance including the Gold Standards Framework Proactive Identification Guidance (GSF PIG) and the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool  (SPICT) resources, and following extensive clinical development.

The purpose of this toolkit is to support colleagues in Primary Care settings in the early identification of people who may be in their last year of life who may benefit from an opportunity to discuss a Personalised Care Support Plan (PCSP), which can be shared on a local Electronic Palliative Care Coordination System (EPaCCS).

• EARLY toolkit

Please use this email to share ay thought or ideas on future updates of the EARLY tool: England.EARLY@nhs.net

Suggested Practice evaluation and Patient experience evaluation forms are available within the EARLY toolkit resources.