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Katharine House Hospice announces potential partnership with OUH

25/11/2020
This article is more than three years old.

Katharine House Hospice has announced it is exploring a potential partnership with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) in a move that would protect the services that the hospice provides.

The hospice, which is based in Adderbury in North Oxfordshire, was formed almost 30 years ago and now supports more than 900 families every year.

It says the healthcare needs of the population it serves are changing rapidly and it needs to ensure the right care is in place as people live longer with more complex illnesses.

Under the potential partnership, the hospice's clinical service would transfer to be under the management of OUH, ensuring a sustainable future and allowing the hospice to protect existing services.

Angharad Orchard, Chief Executive of Katharine House Hospice, said: "Changing demographics mean that we need to deliver a broader range of services to more people in the coming years, and so we have needed to be open to exploring ways of ensuring that happens.

"Continuing our current model would eventually result in the loss of some of our clinical services due to the increasing demand for our services and a deficit in our funding, and we simply cannot allow that to happen. This proposal would protect the services that we provide."

If the partnership progresses, the current services provided by Katharine House would be retained. The hospice would remain a charity and would still need to raise £3 million annually to continue to support future services.

Angharad added: "The partnership would put local people first and enable us to go forward together with confidence with the community we serve. Our vital services would remain in place and people would continue to receive services in the same way they do currently.

"This partnership would therefore not only secure the future of the hospice, but it would enable us to build on it too, and we would be able to continue to deliver the excellent standards of care we always have."

Jason Dorsett, OUH Chief Finance Officer and Executive Director lead at OUH for the potential partnership with Katharine House Hospice, said: "As an organisation, we are committed to working in partnership in order to provide the best possible care for patients in Oxfordshire and beyond.

"We look forward to the benefits which our new partnership with Katharine House Hospice will bring to patients and to the staff who care for them. Our culture of compassionate excellence is a perfect fit with Katharine House's reputation for high quality hospice care which is so valued by the community."

More information is available on the Katharine House Hospice website