NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued: 26th September 2002
SHADOW HEALTH MINISTER SAYS FREE NURSING CARE HAS NOT
WORKED OUT AS EXPECTED
The Government’s introduction of free nursing care has not lived up to expectations, according to Shadow Health Minister Simon Burns.
Speaking to the Registered Nursing Home’s (RNHA) annual conference in Ashford, he said the true costs of nursing care for many of the most dependent patients in nursing homes greatly exceeded the allowances paid by the Government under the scheme.
There was not ‘free nursing care for all’ as portrayed before the last election, he claimed. A great deal of distress had been caused to older people who assumed their nursing costs would be met in full.
In a wide-ranging speech on long-term care, Mr Burns said the greatest current threat to the sector had been the rate of care home closures. “There was a closure rate of just over 4 per cent last year,” he said, “with some areas in the south east of England being the worst affected.”
He added: “The rate of closures does not appear to be abating. I fear that next year’s figures will show a further increase in the decline in the number of beds in care homes.”
Welcoming a recent decision by a Competition Commission appeal tribunal, which ruled that local authorities must not discriminate against private sector homes by paying them less per resident than the equivalent cost of a place in a council-run home, Mr Burns said he hoped the case would put an end to what he called ‘a disgraceful practice which has gone on for far too long.”
As well as calling for higher fees to be paid to nursing homes in order to meet their actual costs of providing care, Mr Burns criticised the level of ‘unnecessary regulation that had seen too many good homes destroyed by heavy-handed bureaucracy’.
“Those regulations which add to the costs of care without producing any benefits to the residents of care homes should be repealed,” he said. “Smaller homes should be excluded from having to implement standards where the cost to them is disproportionate.”
Mr Burns stressed the importance of ring-fencing Government money paid to local authorities to help fund the cost of services for older people. He said: “I believe that it is only by ring-fencing this money that we shall stop councils from raiding elderly care budgets to pay for things that have nothing to do with social care.”
END
For further information about the RNHA annual conference, please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, RNHA
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile
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