About our hospice

Partnership with the NHS

Find out about what has and hasn’t changed here at Katharine House since we entered into our partnership with the NHS in April 2021.

Since April 2021, we have been in a partnership with Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust (OUH – part of the NHS). We made this decision to protect the services that we provide to our communities.

As with many hospices, we had been struggling with increasing costs and a challenging fundraising environment. Without the partnership, we were in danger of being forced to close essential elements of our services.

We are immensely proud to be working with such a well-respected organisation as the NHS. The pandemic reinforced just how important our NHS is to the UK and how tirelessly everyone works to ensure patients are cared for and supported, which is something extremely close to our hearts here at Katharine House.

Since the partnership, we have continued to receive a few enquiries as to what affect this has had on our fundraising needs. Here we hope to address any misconceptions that may have arisen from the change of management to our clinical team.

Katharine House Hospice and OUH partnership FAQs

Do you still need donations and fundraising now that you are in partnership with the NHS?

Yes! In fact, we need your support more than ever. The government has always provided some funding towards Katharine House and this continues, covering approximately one-third of our total costs. The difference since 2021 is that we pay OUH an annual grant to provide our clinical services, rather than us independently running them ourselves.

You may have heard that there is a national hospice funding crisis, with Hospice UK calling for action and support across our sector. Like many other hospices in England, Katharine House has run a deficit budget for many years and has been working tirelessly to address this.

Demand for our services is at an all-time high in our growing and ageing community, so we will need to help even more local people in future. To ensure we can grow and support the increase in need for our vital specialist care, we need donations now more than ever before.

We rely exclusively on the donations and fundraising given to us by the community, along with the money raised in our shops, to cover our costs.

Is Katharine House now part of the NHS?

Katharine House is not part of the NHS. It is being run in partnership with the NHS but is still a charity in its own right. There are many benefits of being in partnership with a well-respected institution like the NHS, for our patients and our staff. Our aim is to ensure that the quality of care remains the same incredibly high standard that our community knows and expects.

Will donations now be absorbed into the trust funds rather than for the sole and direct use of Katharine House Hospice?

All money donated to Katharine House goes directly and entirely towards the hospice and cannot be used for any other purpose, as part of our agreement with the OUH Trust.

Does the partnership mean there will be limited space for locals at the hospice, with patients coming from all over the UK?

More than 90% of the patients we care for at the hospice come from our catchment area, with the majority of these being from Oxfordshire. Our priority is, and will continue to be, caring for people in north Oxfordshire and south Northamptonshire.

Occasionally, if we have the capacity to do so, we will agree to take on patients from other nearby hospices that don’t have enough beds or staff, to ensure that vulnerable people do not miss out on vital care.

Has the Inpatient Unit lost its soul? Is it being run like a hospital?

Katharine House is an incredibly special place that was created to provide a holistic approach to patient care, considering the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of an individual.

This core purpose remains as integral now as it ever has. We continue to provide so much more than a hospital, not only aiming to manage pain or meet the medical needs of a patients, but to help them make the most of the time they have left.

Our additional services include therapies, one-to-one care, relaxation classes, delicious specially cooked meals, bereavement support, health walks, arts and crafts, and much more.

We have helped people hold anniversary ceremonies and even a wedding or two. We make special meals and help to organise activities and even trips out if we can, to allow our patients to spend precious moments with their loved ones. We aim to provide fun and laughter and help people make special memories. At Katharine House Hospice, it really is all about making every moment matter. To find out more, read some of our patient and family stories.

Does Katharine House actually need money? Isn’t it cash rich?

We constantly struggle to raise the money needed to ensure the survival of Katharine House. Our fundraising and retail teams work flat out to ensure that donations keep coming into our hospice. The support we receive from our communities continues to be absolutely fundamental to our survival.

The total cost of running the hospice in 2024/25 was £5.9m, which equates to £16,261 per day. Roughly speaking, Katharine House receives funding from the government to cover around a third of these costs so our fundraising and retail teams have to raise the other two-thirds. Costs have increased considerably in the last four years and are still rising, so this amount will likely increase further.

Katharine House Hospice

To find out more about the work we do, read What we do.
Read about the End-of-life care and Palliative Care (EPiC) Resource Centre, designed to support you and your family and friends, wherever you are in your journey with Katharine House Hospice.
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