Patients are being discharged to die in care homes, conference hears

Experts have called for more funding for research into care at the end of life and have urged close scrutiny of the “increasing” number of deaths in care homes.

John Ellershaw, director of the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute, Liverpool, said that more research was needed as part of the effort to resolve the “unacceptable variation” across the country in the quality of end of life care.

For every £100 (€130; $150) spent on cancer research, just 24 pence was spent on research into end of life, around 0.3%, he said. “With this level of funding we will not move forward fast enough, if at all. I would like to see this increased to 10%. It might sound a lot, but with our aging population it is vital.”

Ellershaw, who is also a professor of palliative medicine at Liverpool University, was speaking at a …