28/03/2023
Continuing healthcare
If you are on this website, it is because you are wondering what happened to the concept of cradle-to-grave free healthcare. For all of your life, free healthcare was given and now you are looking at substantial costs for the rest of the life of your relative/Partner or yourself.
I know what that feels like I had the same shock when trying to organize a care home for my dad. The average person could be obliged to pay over 30% of their net worth to fund end-of-life health care and even obliged to sell the family home!!
Integrated Care Boards in England and Health Boards in Wales can often make arbitrary NHS care funding decisions based on the ability to pay rather than health needs. As a result, you may not receive NHS care funding, even if you are eligible.
Families have recovered over £500 million in wrongly paid fees over the last 10 years. 25% of families have been successful in overturning NHS decisions at the local level.
Unfortunately, many families remain either unaware of their legal rights and the support available to them or their loved ones are wrongly assessed by the NHS as being not eligible for the funding.
Recent statistics confirm that the percentage of people referred for a full assessment that resulted in the person being found eligible for standard NHS Continuing HealthCare (CHC) has dropped by a third in a decade, from 34% in 2011/12 to 22% now.
