The NHS could save £69million a year by providing community care to allow cancer patients in England to die at home instead of in hospital, according to Macmillan Cancer Support.
This comes as the charity urges the Government to publicly commit to implementing free social care at the end of life.
The Macmillan report, Can we live with how we're dying? estimated that £137million was spent delivering hospital care to 36,400 cancer patients - 100 people a day - who died in hospital in 2012 despite saying that they wanted to die at home.
If these people had been provided with community care to help them die at home it would have halved the cost to the NHS (£69m) and the money could be spent elsewhere, the research said.
If this was available for people with other terminal conditions, the potential cost saving would be much higher.
The report sets out the economic and moral case for providing free social care to people at the end of life for the very first time.
Three in four health professionals believe the vast majority (70%) of cancer patients in hospital in the last few days of life would have no medical need to be there if there were alternative community-based services available.
The majority (73%) of senior health and social care decision makers also agree that some of the money spent looking after people at the end of life in hospital could be better spent providing free social care services in their area.
Despite the Government previously saying there would be ‘much merit' in its introduction, it has yet to do so.
Ciarán Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "We urgently need to reform end-of-life services in England. Every day around 100 cancer patients die in expensive hospital beds when they wanted to die at home. This is both morally wrong and a scandalous waste of precious NHS resources.
"It's very simple, there is a real opportunity for the NHS to spend its budget better and we know health commissioners as well as Macmillan support the idea. If up to £69million could be saved by providing community care to cancer patients at the end of life in England, imagine the millions more that could be saved if the 600,000 people who die in the UK every year had an actual choice about where they die.
"We want this Government to publicly commit to implementing a system of free social care at the end of the life in England and the next Government to make it a reality."
