Nursing Care
If you require nursing care then there are some vital questions to be asked about the money required to help you.
WHEN SHOULD THE NHS PAY FOR LONG TERM NURSING CARE?
Or do you have to pay yourself and even have to sell your home to do so?
These are exceptionally important matters, and Hewetts have a proud history of helping people sort through these financial difficulties.
If you need significant nursing care , whether in a nursing home or even in your own home, and if your PRIMARY need is nursing care (as opposed to social care where nursing is merely ancillary or incidental to the provision of residential accommodation) then the NHS should be funding your care IN FULL and not just the relatively paltry Registered Nursing Care Contribution (RNCC). This may even be so if day to day care is given by experienced family members or by carers who aren’t themselves nurses.
Nursing as an incidental part of social care has, by contrast, always been self funding, subject to Local Authority funding being available if your assessable capital falls below £21,500 (April 2007).
The dividing line between the two levels of nursing care has always been a grey area bedevilled by inconsistencies of criteria applied by different health authorities (SHAs) and also by overlap and inconsistency with criteria for other benefits such as RNCC. Some criteria have been held by courts to be unlawfully high and over restrictive and others often to have been misapplied.
Because of these inconsistencies, which have been even more marked in the past, SHAs at the instigation of the Health Service Commissioner (the Ombudsman), have agreed to review assessments going back as far as 1st April 1996, but this may shortly be restricted to 2004 onwards.
So here is your opportunity! And where we can help.
Retrospective review - The first step is to gather evidence – obtain copies of past assessments, and get legal and medical advice as to whether they should be challenged.
Current Care – ask for assessments to be made by your local PCT and also possibly obtain specialist independent medical reports.
If the outcome of either assessment is unsatisfactory we at Hewetts can, in conjunction with your nursing care providers, closely examine the assessments against the relevant Eligibilty Criteria and where appropriate
- seek review
- if review outcome considered to be wrong, direct a complaint to the Health Services Commission
- if still dissatisfied, then to refer the issue on to the Ombudsman and advise as to what evidence and representation is required at each stage.
Keeping outside the court system and heading for the Ombudsman is usually more successful and certainly far cheaper.
We offer free initial advice, limited to the first 30-60 minutes, regardless of whether or not you later wish to instruct us to act for you.