Budget pressures on the NHS mean thousands of elderly people are being rushed into care homes from hospitals without a review meeting to discuss funding arrangements for their care, say experts.
This means thousands of vulnerable elderly people are wrongly paying for their care when they are entitled to funding from their local NHS Trust.
There are 376,250 older people living in 10,331 care homes in England. Care home residents who transfer directly from hospital are entitled to a review meeting to discuss their care needs and funding arrangements.
The ‘care home refunds’ scandal has arisen as the NHS has admitted thousands of relatives were mistakenly forced to pay for fees when they were entitled to government funding. 56,000 elderly people – nearly a third of those entitled to have their care home fees paid in full last year – were forced to turn to relatives for help with topping up care home bills – a four per cent jump on the previous year.
If your relative has been rejected for care home funding because of financial eligibility alone or because of a recent health assessment, they should challenge the decision immediately. They’re entitled to a review meeting to determine if they are owed money by the NHS but many people don’t understand the complexity of the process. Budget cuts and staffing shortages mean this review is often overlooked or not conducted fairly.
Most people find the review process daunting and fail to leave with the funding they actually deserve. It is felt the NHS makes it deliberately complex for people to understand. It’s shocking and many people will lose their home over this issue because they need to sell it off to pay for nursing home fees which can be as much as £1,000 per week.
The average cost of a care home is £750 per week and many victims of the funding scandal were forced to sell their home or use their inheritance to pay the cost. Alarmingly even family members who kept appealing the initial decision and were rejected again and again – have now been told they were entitled to funding after all. Some families have recovered more than £100,000 in fees wrongly paid by elderly relatives.
Ten million people in the UK are now aged over 65 and the number is expected to double to around 19 million by 2050.
