I think it is fair to say that all patients who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma will at some point require expert skills and support from their local palliative care teams. For many patients the thought of being referred to the palliative care team or local hospice can be very frightening. Many patients and families associate a referral to palliative care and the hospice as meaning a person is reaching the end of their life. When I worked at Guy’s Hospital many patients would say to me when I said I was going to refer them to palliative care,

‘Oh, I am not ready for that nurse, I am not dying yet???’

However, the input of the palliative care team can in some cases improve life expectancy as symptoms can be better controlled which improves quality of life and patients’ psychological wellbeing. The other benefit of having an early referral to your local palliative care team is that it allows you and your family time to build up a relationship and trust in the team which can alleviate a lot of the fear and distress when you become end of life.

Hospices and community palliative care teams provide an invaluable service to patients who have incurable diseases or advanced cancer diagnosis. Many hospices will offer admissions into the inpatient unit for patients with complex symptoms that are not able to be well managed at home. These symptom control admissions are usually no more than a couple of weeks and allow the palliative care doctors and nurses to closely monitor a patient 24 hours a day and try different medications to alleviate distressing symptoms. Some patients will request that when the time comes that they want to be admitted into the hospice for end-of-life care.

In England, hospices receive a third of their funding from the Government, but this leaves hospices to find an additional £1billion a year in order to keep providing services to patients.

Over the last few years, I have witnessed first hand the impact of reduced funding to hospices, this has resulted in some hospices closing completely and others closing beds and reducing staffing both in the inpatient unit and in the community nursing teams. The impact on patients is that some patients do not have a hospice in their local catchment area and for other patients due to the increasing pressure on the community teams they may not have many face to face visits with their allocated palliative care nurse. I worry about this reduction in service and the potential impact on patients and their families.

However, there is some positive news on how mesothelioma patients and their families may be able to help. If you have instructed a solicitor to make a compensation claim on your behalf and you are under the care of your local hospice palliative care team, then the solicitor can include the costs of the care you are receiving from the hospice team as part of the claim. The claim for the recovery of hospice fees would be an additional sum of money and does not affect the amount of compensation paid to you. Over the years the expert solicitors who are on the HASAG panel have successfully recovered hospice costs which have then been given back to the hospice by the patient and their family. This enables the hospice to continue to provide care and support to other patients and their families.

If you are in the process of pursuing a legal claim with one of our expert panel, please ask them about the recovery of hospice costs and they will be able to provide you with advice and information on this.

I have included below some of the amazing outcomes the HASAG legal panel have achieved on behalf of patients.

Hospice Recovery Costs

All the solicitors on the HASAG legal panel have been able to recover hospice costs from some of their patients’ legal claims. I have given 3 examples below

Successfully claimed a total of £30,219 for 8 hospices from 2024 to present day.

Successfully claimed £30,00 for one hospice which equates to a junior nurse’s salary for one year

Have recovered over £100k to date. 

I am sure you will agree these figures are substantial and hospices have reported that the recovery of some of the costs of providing patient care has enabled them to continue to provide care for patients in need.

If you would like more information on the recovery of hospice costs, please talk to your solicitor.

Rachel Thomas

HASAG Mesothelioma Nurse Specialist