Updated 12 January 2024
Hospiscare provides services to adults over the age of 18, with life-limiting illness and advanced progressive conditions to people living in Devon. In the previous year (2023), it cared for 2,225 people, their families and loved ones. The service currently has an 8 bed in-patient unit based in Exeter, a team of community nurse specialists, a range of day services and support groups and a hospice to home team. We conducted an assessment of the Devon service from 30 January to 2 April 2024. We reviewed safe, effective, responsive and well-led key questions. The overall rating for this service is outstanding. For the safe key question, the service was rated good. At this assessment, we looked at safe systems, pathways and transitions and safe and effective staffing. We also assessed elements of safe environments and infection prevention and control. All of these areas were rated good. The service was rated outstanding in the effective key question. At this assessment we did not rate all the evidence categories and the outstanding scores from the previous inspection in 2016 were used to calculate the new score. For effective, we looked at the evidence category, ‘Monitoring and improving outcomes' which was rated good. The service was rated outstanding in the responsive key question. We assessed ‘Care provision, integration and continuity’. We rated this as good because the service had integrated into local communities and understood the diverse health and care needs of people. In particular there was some good work providing end of life support to homeless people in conjunction with a local charity as well as work with the local prison service to provide education and support around end of life care. For the well-led key question, we assessed the evidence category 'Governance, management and sustainability' which was rated good.