| The next few years are a crucial window of opportunity for primary care if we are to ensure that we can deliver a gold standard of end of life care for all that need it by 2012, the start of the upturn in deaths and looming avalanche of need awaiting us. We invite you to join in this challenge - one of the greatest challenges we face in healthcare and as a society - to provide high quality care for all people nearing the end of life, with any condition, in any setting, at any time. Building on a strong foundation, with increasing emphasis on quality, it is time for fresh, new and updated ideas, tools, training and resources. The GSF Next Stage Programme - Going for Gold, launched in June 09, brings together many recent GSF developments and integrates the latest thinking from local and national experience. The aim is to help all practices improve care at the end of life by supporting them to move on to the Next Stage of use of GSF, from Foundation to Intermediate to Advanced levels. We strongly encourage teams towards greater integration of all the composite parts of GSF for maximal patient benefit. Through quality improvement training, quality assessment tools, and means of quality recognition, we hope to increase consistency and effectiveness of GSF use, optimising care for all people nearing the end of life, regardless of diagnosis. We now have adaptations of GSF for many settings including care homes, hospitals and others, to add to cross boundary continuity of care. Thank you for sharing our commitment to this important work and we invite you to join us as we together ‘Go for Gold’. We look forward to hearing from you | 