NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 26th April 2005
OLDER VOTERS IN SCOTLAND URGED TO CHECK ON POLITICAL PARTIES’ FUNDING FOR NURSING HOME CARE
As the general election campaign gets into full swing, older people and their families in Scotland are being urged by the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) to take account of political parties’ past records and future policies on funding the care of those who need round the clock nursing.
The RNHA has published a manifesto listing ten commitments it would like to see politicians make so that older people can exercise real choices about the type and setting of the care they receive and are given financial aid that covers their costs.
In future, the RNHA wants the level of payments made by local authorities to older people in nursing homes to be set by independent tribunals comprising experts in the calculation of care costs.
According to estimates by the RNHA and independent experts, a typical 25-place nursing home in the UK currently receives over £2,000 a week less from public funds for the care it provides to its patients than the actual costs incurred.
The current system, claims the RNHA, is especially unfair to the patients who still have to pay out of their own pockets for a substantial part of their care.
Said RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: “The inequity of it all is that one group of older people are having to subsidise another group. Alternatively, nursing homes run at a loss, which is undermining the financial stability of the long-term care sector and results ultimately in closures of nursing homes.”
Independent analysts Laing & Buisson, who have carried out a study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, calculate that a ‘fair price for care’ during 2004/05 should have been between £420 and £497 per patient per week (without taking into account the October 2004 increase in the national minimum wage).
In other words, the combined weekly total of NHS contributions and social services payments for a nursing home patient in Scotland should have worked out somewhere between these figures.
But a survey by Laing & Buission shows that the amounts paid to nursing homes to look after patients in many Scottish local authority areas have generally been between £390 to £430 a week, well below the recommended range.
Results from the survey indicate that, prior to last October’s national minimum wage increase, the total amounts paid by Scottish local authorities for nursing home care were as follows:
Aberdeen: £418 a week
Aberdeenshire: £418 a week
Angus: £420 a week
Argyll and Bute: £416 a week
Clackmannanshire: Between £397 and £447 a week
Dumfries and Galloway: £415 a week
Dundee: Between £397 and £417 a week
East Ayrshire: Between £400 and £421 a week
East Dunbartonshire: Between £400 and £420 a week
East Lothian: Between £406 and £427 a week
East Renfrewshire: £421 a week
Edinburgh: Between £400 and £420 a week
Falkirk: Between £373 and £416 a week
Fife: Between £391 and £415 a week
Highland: Between £394 and £414 a week
Inverclyde: Between £401 and £421
Midlothian: Between £406 and £427
Moray: £417 a week
North Ayrshire: Between £400 and £420 a week
North Lanarkshire: Between £402 and £417 a week
Orkney: £420 a week
Perth and Kinross: £420 a week
Renfrewshire: Between £394 and £415 a week
Scottish Borders: Between £398 and £418 a week
South Ayrshire: Between £400 and £420 a week
South Lanarkshire: Between £397 and £417 a week
Stirling: Between £405 and £420 a week
Western Isles: Between £435 and £470 a week
West Lothian: Between £400 and £420 a week
END
Notes to editors:
1. The Registered Nursing Home Association represents some 1,300 nursing homes located throughout the United Kingdom.
2. The recommended ‘fair price for care’ from April 2004, based on calculations made by the independent analysts Laing & Buisson, was between £420 and £497 per patient per week. The higher figure takes account of the capital borrowing costs for a newly built nursing home and the extra running costs faced by a nursing home which meets care standards fully.
3. The figures quoted in Note 2 above do not take account of the increase in the national minimum wage which came into effect in October 2004. The correspondingly adjusted ‘fair price for care’ figures are £441 to £520 per patient per week.
4. The figures shown in the news release as the combined amounts paid by the NHS and social services per patient per week in Scottish local authority areas appeared in the July 2004 issue of Community Care Market News, published by Laing & Buisson.
5. Analysts Laing & Buisson calculated that, during the past twelve months, over the UK as a whole the average gap between the combined payments of the NHS and social services and the actual cost of nursing home care per patient worked out at £86 per week.
For further information and comment please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, Registered Nursing Home Association
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile
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