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NHS face £500 MILLION Bill for Long Term Care Scandal
October 12, 2003 12:01 AM
New research published today by the Liberal Democrats has found that the NHS is facing claims of £557 million as a result of denying hundreds of sick elderly people NHS funding for their continuing healthcare in nursing homes. The shocking cost is revealed in a
The research was undertaken by Paul Burstow MP, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Older People. The research is based on replies to a survey by 23 of the 28 Strategic Health Authorities in England. The results are published in a report entitled Continuing Care - Coming up short. The main findings are:
- The cost of paying compensation claims to people wrongfully denied NHS funding this year alone is £220 million. This is likely to be a conservative estimate of the final cost.
- The total cost of compensation claims is put at £557 million by Strategic Health Authorities. Again this is likely to be conservative estimate of the cost.
- In addition to the cost of compensation there is the administrative cost of reviewing claims. This has been put at £100,000 per Primary Care Trust. For England as a whole the administration cost could be in the region of £30.3 million. There is no separate funding for this.
Commenting on the findings Mr Burstow said:
"Ministers have turned a blind eye while the NHS has change the law on who pays for care without Parliament's approval and without any debate. The Courts have made clear that the law is that if your primary care needs are health needs, and that is why you are in a nursing home, then the NHS should be paying for your care.
"Thousands of elderly people have been illegally striped of their life savings to pay for long term healthcare. Care they had every right to expect would be free on the basis of need.
"Even on the NHS's own reckoning the cost of putting right this injustice runs into hundreds of millions of pounds. It could be much higher as more an more people challenge rules that lack any principle.
"Despite a clear steer from the Courts in 1999 and a rap over the knuckles by the Ombudsman earlier this year Health Ministers have failed to act decisively. Even now Ministers are leaving it to the NHS locally to draw up their own rules. That means 28 different sets of rules for deciding who pays. Decisions about whether a person qualifies for NHS funded healthcare should be on a case by case basis, not depend on where a person happens to live.
"The NHS is now facing a huge bill for compensation as a result of Ministerial neglect or incompetence. The only way to bring clarity and fairness to the decision about who pays for care is for the Government to follow Scotland's lead and implement the Royal Commission proposal that all personal and nursing care should be free on the basis of need.
ENDS
Notes to editors
Many of the rules drawn up by the NHS take a 'banded' approach, establishing three or four 'bands' and placing in the worst category of life threatening conditions - artificial respiration and feeding, double incontinence, total immobility, round the clock medical interventions etc in band one, and then specify that it is only this band which unambiguously qualifies for NHS funding.
The legal position was clarified by the Court in the Coughlan case (details on request) it is a persons health need not the health treatment that determines eligibility for NHS funding.
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