TERMINALLY ill patients are spending their final days at Bronglais Hospital despite their wishes to die at home.

A Freedom of Information request by the Cambrian News reveals patients considered to be entering a ‘terminal phase’, meaning they have six weeks or less to live, have died at the Aberystwyth hospital after being declined an application for continuing care at home.

Once a doctor assesses a terminally ill patient and decides they can receive care at home, a ‘fast-track’ application is made to the health board, which then makes the final decision.

If the application is declined, doctors can ask for the decision to be reconsidered, but the outcome is not certain and patients who are eventually approved will have even less time remaining to spend at home with family and friends.

Hywel Dda Health Board has largely refused to reveal exact figures, including the number of patients approved or declined an application continuing care, and those that went on die at Bronglais after being declined.

The health board would also not reveal the number of patients who were initially declined continuing care and later approved following reconsideration. In justifying its partial disclosure, the health board claimed the exact figures were so low that to reveal them could risk identifying the patients.

Hywel Dda’s response does, however, confirm that terminally ill patients who would have preferred to die at home, and whose doctors believe they should have been allowed to die at home, in fact died at Bronglais Hospital.

The response shows that in 2015/16, of the 39 ‘fast-track’ applications carried out, between one and 10 patients died at Bronglais Hospital after being declined.

After being declined, between one and 10 patients in this same period waited an average of 20 days for their application to be reconsidered and finally approved.

The situation improved in 2016/17, when all of the 36 ‘fast track’ applications were approved and no continuing care applicants died at Bronglais Hospital.

However, with only partial figures for 2017/18 thus far, the Cambrian News can reveal that of the 17 ‘fast-track’ applications made, between one and 10 patients have died at the hospital after being declined.

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition on Wednesday