Bedford’s Living Well Centre now supporting more patients through enhanced services

Bedford’s Living Well Centre now supporting more patients through enhanced services

A year on from Keech Hospice Care’s merger with Bedford Daycare Hospice, the specialist care charity is now supporting many more local patients through its recently refurbished Living Well Centre. The Centre, located at Gladys Hibbert House on Linden Road, Bedford, offers personalised, compassionate and holistic care to adults and children with life-limiting conditions.

New services:
Prior to the merger, Bedford-based patients were limited to the range of services they could access without travelling outside the town or receiving treatment in their own homes. The launch of the Living Well Centre, which has been awarded CQC status, allows patients access to a much wider range of services including:

● Face-to-face nursing and medical assessments
● Symptom control programmes
● Future planning support
● Complementary therapies, wellbeing sessions and cancer support groups
● Memory-making and life story activities

Improvements have also been made to the layout of the building to allow for better patient access, and to create an interior more conducive to delivering the range and types of services on offer.

More patients benefiting
In its first three months of operating, the Living Well Centre received the same number of referrals as the former provision had over the entire previous year. Prior to the merger, the Bedford provision was only able to offer nursing support; now medical, emotional, spiritual and social support are also available.

The Centre now supports around 70 patients every week, who attend to access a range of treatments from nursing and medical services to counselling and complementary therapies.

Clinical Director of Keech Hospice Care, Elaine Tolliday, said:
“The vastly expanded range of services offered in our new Living Well Centre enables us to help so many more patients and their families to enhance the quality of their lives. The Living Well Centre takes an entirely patient-focused approach, supporting the needs of the whole person. At a time when hospices all over the country are experiencing many challenges, we feel enormously fortunate that we are able to provide this service to the people of Bedford.”