CARE for patients in Bromsgrove who are dying of cancer is being passed over for resources because national guidelines do not recognise it as a priority, a top doctor has revealed.

Long-awaited plans to provide beds to care for dying patients in Bromsgrove have been stalled because the NHS does not regard it as essential, palliative care consultant Dr Ian Douglas explained.

Palliative care allows patients with diseases that could kill them, such as cancer or progressive heart failure, to live their lives fully and to end them in dignity, with the minimum of distress.

Worcestershire Community and Mental Health NHS Trust put in a bid to fund beds based at the Princess of Wales Community Hospital in Stourbridge Road.

But guidelines from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence forced the trust to provide a costly new form of chemotherapy and the extra burden on resources meant the bid for palliative care failed.

Currently there are no palliative care beds in Bromsgrove - about six are needed to match the national average, at a cost of £400,000.

The Finstall-based Primrose Hospice and Cancer Help Centre have offered help with funding to get the unit up and running, but they cannot provide the £360,000 annual running costs alone.

Without the beds, patients are either left to die at home even when family members cannot cope, admitted to hospitals where there is no specialist staff or moved out of the area.

Dr Douglas said: "I believe that potentially we could get more benefit from spending on palliative care than buying more chemotherapy drugs.

"For an individual there comes a point where chemotherapy cannot help them any more.

"Hopefully palliative care beds will become something that must happen rather than just something that should happen."

He said guidelines on palliative care are to be drawn up at the end of the year, which may give it higher priority.