Synopsis 5 – Voluntary hospices in England: A viable business model

In this article it summarises that the Government’s end of life care strategy (2008) is to build more charitable voluntary hospitals in England and whether it is healthy or delicate to going along with the process according to Primary care trust (PCT). The article investigates the issue by extracting financial data from the top 25 hospitals that report their financials following Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP). The analysis gathered via the investigation reveals that although hospital’s income has generated by an average rate of 7% in the recent years, this conceals variability and instability. Hospital’s income comes from donations, legacies, trading, investments and government PCT.
Hospital’s managers and trustees are motivated to increase their investment in relaxing care services but this also requires additional expenditure in activities that drive funding and trading activity. Often, expenses run ahead of uncertain and volatile income streams and good governance requires trustees to maintain acceptable balance sheet reserves. The general policy is to split hospice reserves into cash held in deposits and funds managed by investment banks where portfolios include equity shares and property. In the ‘good years’ hospices have extracted holding gains to boost income or finance capital projects but the current financial crisis exposes hospices to capital market risk as investments are marked to