Under a welcome re- designation of voluntary hospice providers, Milford Care Centre is to be fully Government funded from February.
It had been part-funded by the exchequer to date, with the rest of monies arriving from various fund-raising efforts across the mid-west region each year, along with philan-thropic support.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly declared: “This is a significant step towards our goal of providing universal access to palliative care.”
He continued: “There has been excellent progress made since the HSE (Health Service Executive) established a National Implementation Group to carry out this transition. I’d like to thank all members of the implementation group for their commitment and hard work. We are rightly very proud of our palliative care services in Ireland.”
The Minister praised the work of the voluntary hospice sector in partnership with local communities in expanding the network of hospice services around the country.
He added that the plan will mean certainty for staff and finances in Milford, and similar centres at Marymount University Hospital and Hospice (Cork), Galway Hospice and St. Francis Hospice (Dublin).
The cost is in the region of €18.5 million.
“It will strengthen their core services and mean, for example, that fund-raising by the hospices will no longer be required to cover payroll or other operational costs such as electricity and heating,” the Minister explained.
Currently, approximately 70% of inpatient and three-quarters of comm-unity adult specialist palliative care services are provided by voluntary hospices, such as Milford.
There are approximately 1,300 staff employed across the four hospices.
Established by The Little Company of Mary in 1928, Milford was initially a nursing home, while a palliative care section was introduced in the late 1970s.
“Our primary focus is to deliver exceptional care that exceeds national standards in quality, safety and patient satis-faction,” commented Mary O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer at Milford.