NHS saves money by withdrawing financial support from elderly

1st July 2011

There is evidence that the NHS is seeking to cut costs by withdrawing crucial financial support for care for some elderly patients. With the Dilnot report on funding of care for the elderly due next week, NewLaw can reveal a worrying trend among some NHS trusts. NHS funded continuing health care should be available to all those who have a primary health need. In practice this should mean that, for elderly patients whose primary reason for needing care is because of failing health, care either in a residential care homeor in their own homes is meant to be paid for by the NHS.

In this case the patient or his or her family should not be expected to pay towards the care. But in a worrying new trend, some patients who have previously been funded by the NHS are being reassessed and stripped of their financial support. The family is then required to pick up the bill, often leading to the trauma of having to sell the family home to pay for it, since the average annual cost of a care home place is £26,000.

Often, the NHS decision is made even though the patient’s condition seems to be deteriorating. Given existing problems in persuading local authorities and the NHS to shoulder their responsibilities in providing financial support, the concern is that the move by the NHS is an attempt simply to cut costs. Yet it is not generally known and seems often to be hidden that any such decision by the NHS can be open to appeal. It is also the case that when a relative is turned down for continuing healthcare funding, that decision too can be the subject of an appeal.

Evidence gathered by NewLaw suggests that the NHS often do not apply their own criteria for assessment correctly. They are often contradictory and error-prone.

Luisa Leporeis one of NewLaw’s specialists in analysing care funding procedures. “The criteria for eligibility is subjective therefore we see a lot of inconsistency in how it is applied across the country.

Lack of information from the NHS is preventing people from realising that this funding even exists. Many Primary Care Trust’s are failing to properly advise people about their entitlement to funding or about their rights to appeal.

In many cases vulnerable older people are paying for their own care when NHS should be providing it for free. Often these individuals are dependent on their families to battle for their care to be funded by the NHS.

I was recently informed by a client fighting for Continuing Health Care on behalf of her father that the Primary Care Trust recently took every single person funded via NHS Continuing Care in his care home off the funding. It seems highly unlikely that every person had suddenly stopped being eligible.”

For more information call Luisa Lepore or Kirsty Lay

10/08/2011