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Patients undergoing palliative or end-of-life care experience “insufficient” 24/7 access to medication and pharmacies, a report commissioned by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee has highlighted.
In its evaluation of palliative care services in England, published on 28 November 2025, an expert panel — made up of members selected by the Health and Social Care Committee — said it had heard from clinicians that the “huge shift” to community-based palliative care planned by the government is not currently supported by funding models and priorities.
The report said: “Undertaking this shift will take a lot of time, resource, capacity and capability — for example, to address issues surrounding ‘insufficient’ 24/7 access to symptomatic medication in the community and at home, and in some regions, no 24/7 pharmacies.
“According to the [Royal College of General Practitioners], delays in access to out-of-hours medication outside of acute settings continue to ‘drive avoidable hospital attendances’,” it added.
Lack of access to 24/7 palliative care medicines has been well documented. In 2022, a report published by end-of-life charity Marie Curie revealed that only 25% of areas surveyed had a pharmacy open throughout the night to dispense palliative care medicines, while 55% had a pharmacy open for some of the night.
In June 2025, a report from Hospice UK called for improved access to community pharmacy palliative care services, including for specific support to help rural community pharmacies operate outside normal working hours.
In its palliative care report, the Health and Social Care Committee also found that there is a “postcode lottery” in integrated care board provision of palliative care and end-of-life services, while financial pressures mean insufficient funds are allocated to services.
It added that patients and carers struggle to navigate “a complex and fragmented” system, and the health and social care workforce is not equipped to meet the needs of people at the end of their lives owing to a lack of education and training.
The report also found that the specialist palliative care workforce is in a “critical situation”, along with additional shortages across the generalist workforce.
Children and young people’s services particularly have “serious workforce shortages”, it said.
Commenting on the report, Laura Wilson, director for Scotland at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), said: “Patients requiring palliative or end-of-life care and their families must benefit from systems and practitioners that make sure the process of obtaining medicines, including urgent controlled medicines, is as easy and timely as possible.
“This will avoid any delay in treatment in all care settings and help to ensure patients can stay in their own homes, in comfort, without needing to be transferred to hospital for essential medicines.”
On 27 November 2025, the RPS published its updated palliative care policy, in which it called for all integrated care boards or health boards to have a lead paediatric palliative care pharmacist role.
