Delivering Choice Programme evaluation

Marie Curie Cancer Care is a UK charity that specialises in providing high-quality services for patients at the end of their lives.

In 2004 Marie Curie launched the Delivering Choice Programme, which aims to develop and help provide the best possible service for patients at the end of their lives, allowing them to make free and informed choices about their place of treatment and death.

Recent research shows that 64 per cent of people would choose to die at home, but only 25 per cent achieve this.

The programme seeks to make care in the community a genuine option through improved planning, co-ordination and uptake of existing local services, and through working in partnership with local organisations to apply best practice in health and social care.

In collaboration with Marie Curie, the King’s Fund has set up a learning and development team to evaluate and improve Delivering Choice Programme sites across the UK.

A process of ongoing evaluation began in April 2007 and will continue for three years. This ongoing evaluation, which the King’s Fund is carrying out in partnership with Delivering Choice sites, aims to help to establish a culture of informed reflective practice and to improve service delivery.

The evaluation uses an action research approach, and results will be shared with Delivering Choice sites so that the findings can influence effective practice and delivery.

Research approaches are likely to include:

interviews with service providers, commissioners and patients
observation of key meetings, and
review of local documentation and data.

Alongside the action research focus, the secondary objective of the research is to consider the sustainability of the Delivering Choice Programme as a continuing model of service re-design. We are considering the following questions:

Has there been a shift in the use of palliative care services since the introduction of the Delivering Choice Programme?
What are the costs associated with that shift?
What is the impact of any shift in service utilisation on other provider organisations?
How do factors such as complexity of patient and carer need affect utilisation of services?

A final evaluation of all of the sites will be published at the end of the three years, in order to assess how the development sites have performed and to provide an independent analysis of the Delivering Choice Programme as a model of service redesign.

For more information, contact Rachael Addicott, Senior Researcher on the Delivering Choice evaluation.

For more information please visit the Delivering Choice Programme website.

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