NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 20th February 2003
HEALTH OMBUDSMAN’S RULINGS EXPOSE THE ‘LOTTERY OF NHS
FUNDING FOR LONG-TERM CARE’
Today’s rulings by the Health Service Ombudsman on four cases where patients should have had all their nursing home care costs met by the NHS has been described as a ‘wake up call’ to the Government.
The Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA), Britain’s largest organisation representing nursing homes, is calling on the Department of Health to ensure that the problems faced by the four patients (all now deceased) and their families are never experienced again, whether in the four geographical areas concerned (Berkshire, Birmingham, Bolton and Dorset) or anywhere else in the country.
The association claims the case highlights the bureaucratic minefield through which very sick people may be forced to tread, with some local NHS services doing their utmost to avoid assuming financial responsibility for the care costs of patients with long-term nursing needs.
The RNHA’s chief executive officer, Frank Ursell, commented: “It is incredible that people with such intense nursing needs as in the four cases that have come to light should not at the time have been regarded as eligible for NHS funding when they were transferred from a hospital to a nursing home. It seems that in these cases there was an extremely narrow and incorrect interpretation of the law and Department of Health guidance. It smacks more of an accountant’s ‘bottom line’ philosophy than one based on what is right for an individual patient.”
He added: “For far too long the decisions made about whether individuals being cared for outside hospital do or don’t qualify for NHS funding have been subject to the vagaries of criteria drawn up and interpreted by health authorities apparently more concerned about their budgets than about patients’ needs and rights. It makes the whole thing into something of lottery.”
Now the RNHA wants the Department of Health to ‘knock some heads together’ and make it clear that the NHS must meet all its obligations when patients have complex and long-term nursing needs.
Said Mr Ursell: “There are lessons to be learned nationally, as well as locally, from the experiences of these four unfortunate patients. We need a more transparent, more consistent application of national guidance about what citizens can expect when their health care is provided outside the NHS but in circumstances where the NHS should foot the bill.
“At the moment, there are too many loopholes which allow local health services to get out of their obligations and to adopt a highly subjective approach to whether they do or don’t pay up. That makes patients and their families very vulnerable to being messed about. ”
END
Notes to editors:
1. The Health Service Ombudsman’s Report on NHS Funding for Long-Term Care
was published today (20th February 2003).
2. The above report contains detailed findings by the Ombudsman on four cases
following complaints against their local Health Authorities by the patients’
relatives. One of the patients suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, another from
dementia and two from the consequences of a severe stroke.
3. The Ombudsman upheld the four complaints and recommended that the new
Health Authorities which came into existence on 1st April 2002 review their
eligibility criteria for assessing whether the cost of long-term care should be met
by the NHS. The Ombudsman further recommended that the new Authorities
determine whether there are any patients who were wrongly refused funding for
continuing care and make the necessary arrangements to reimburse them.
For further information and comment, please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, RNHA
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or mobile 07785 227000
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