Home Hospice Service

As more people choose to be cared for in their own home at the end of their lives, the Home Hospice service, co-funded by Sobell House Hospice Charity and Macmillan Cancer Support with support from Social Finance, helps to meet this need.

The Home Hospice Service, consisting of four interlinked services, has been set up to enhance the quality of care for patients with a life-limiting condition in Oxfordshire and South Northamptonshire through:

  • Offering personalised care to more people in their own homes when they are dying, if this is their choice, through integrated and enhanced palliative care and support.
  • Reducing the length of time in hospital, so people can continue to be cared for at home with the right support in place in the last 12 months of life and have a better care experience. Thanks to the Home Hospice Service, between April 2022 and January 2024, patients spent over 10,000 days at home instead of in hospital in the last year of their life.
  • Early supported discharge from hospital, where this is the choice of patients and their families.
  • Complementing existing services provided by a wide range of valued hospices and care providers (rather than replacing them).

Home Hospice

The Home Hospice Care team delivers care to end-of-life patients in their own homes during the last few weeks of their life, or as short-term crisis intervention until care can be provided by another care agency.

Support is offered with personal care, dressing, food preparation, and repositioning, with the overall aim that the patient can remain in their own home to die, if this is their wish.

Patients are referred to the Home Hospice Care team by a doctor or nurse involved in their care. Once a referral is received, a Home Hospice Care Assessor will visit the patient to complete a holistic assessment. Following the initial assessment care visits are scheduled and care is delivered by trained Patient Support Workers.

The Home Hospice Care Team covers Oxfordshire and South Northamptonshire, with bases at the Horton General Hospital and at Unipart House in Oxford.

Hospital Rapid Response

This extends the existing hospital palliative care team to support rapid discharge from hospital for patients that are likely in the last few weeks of life, where going home is the choice for them and their families.

Palliative Care Hub

The existing palliative care hub has been expanded, to enable patients, families, and carers who need advice to have faster contact with the right health professional, and get rapid support as required.

Hospice Outreach

This is an extension of the existing community palliative care team to support unstable or complex dying palliative care patients in their own homes. The service is run as a ‘virtual ward’ or ‘virtual hospice’, with the aim to avoid unnecessary admission to hospital for a person who has a palliative care crisis at home (or, if admission to hospital is necessary, making this a planned admission rather than an emergency).

For more information, please visit the Oxford University Hospitals palliative care hub.