NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney has awarded St Elizabeth Hospice a 12 month contract to provide an out of hours specialist palliative care telephone advice line from April 2011.
The telephone advice line will provide expert advice about palliative care from clinical nurse specialists and palliative care consultants.
The launch of this service means the Great Yarmouth and Waveney area now has a specialist palliative care telephone advice line during most of the day, nights and weekends as all local services now link-up to provide vital medical advice for everyone involved in providing end of life care.
The new St Elizabeth Hospice out of hours service will run from 17.00-09.00 Monday to Sunday and bank holidays and is available to GPs, nurses and other medical professionals, health and social care workers and their patients.
The number is 0800 56 70 909 and calls are free from a BT landline.
This new service supports and underpins the existing James Paget University Hospitals in hours service from 09.00-17.00 Monday to Friday.
Both advice telephone lines offer a speedy response to essential enquiries about end of life care from clinical nurse specialists and palliative care consultants. The telephone systems will automatically capture data for audit, quality and monitoring which means the services will be developed and improved.