Cheating The Elderly? Is The NHS Unfairly Robbing Many Elderly Patients?
On the 16th July The Court of Appeal made a land mark judgement known in the case of "NORTH and EAST DEVON HEALTH AUTHORITY EX PARTE COUGHLAN, R v. [1998] EWHC Admin 1134 (11th December, 1998)" In essence what this case said was that where a patient's primary need for accommodation is a health need, then the patient's nursing care is the responsibility of the NHS and not the local authority. This fact is recognised in the Dept. of Health directive HSC 2001/17: LAC (2001)26. issued on 25th. September 2001 (page 31).
Almost by definition, the primary need of the vast majority of people in nursing homes is a health one, yet Primary Health Care Trusts and Local Authority Social Service Departments as a matter of routine regularly discharge elderly patients direct from NHS hospitals to private nursing homes and tell the patients that they must start spending hundreds of pounds a week to pay for their own health needs. Yet anybody with a 'health need' or 'disability' is entitled by law to have all their care costs met by the NHS. It therefore follows that the Primary Health Care Trust (or social services department) do not have the legal power to apply 'eligibility criteria' or carry out 'means testing'. The reason why the NHS applies such tight eligibility criteria and does not make it clear to the frail and vulnerable elderly patients in its care, that in all probability they do not have to pay for their care, is because of the huge cost that the NHS would have to bear if the "Coughlin" criteria were properly applied to the huge numbers of elderly patients who currently care for their own health care and would no longer have to do so in the future.
In 1997 Steve Squires father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and he was placed in a nursing home by his local Social Services Department and as is the current usual practice in the United Kingdom he was placed in a nursing home and told that he would have to pay all of his care costs. Steve then questioned the legitimacy of this arrangement as he believed that under the Health Acts the NHS were responsible for all his father's care costs and after nearly six years of persisting with this view against endless obstruction placed in his way by the NHS and Social Services, the Ombudsman ruled in his favour and he has now received a full refund of all his father's care costs, together with legal costs - and compounded interest. The Ombudsman upheld his complaint that 'the eligibility criteria were more restrictive than national guidance allowed' and it therefore follows that any patient suffering from a similar disease, or requiring similar care, who has been refused 100% NHS funding, must also have been subjected to 'unlawfully restrictive eligibility criteria' when the decision to make them pay for their care was taken and this is confirmed in HSC2001/17 (page 31) where it states that anybody with a health need or a disability must have all their care paid for by the NHS. If you would like to read Steve's own story about how he achieved justice for his father you can go to his website by clicking here.
The BBC have covered this issue and you can read their report by clicking here and if you would like to view Niall Dickson's BBC television report on the subject of the plight of the elderly who have been forced to pay for their healthcare click here.
If you have an elderly relative (or indeed are an elderly patient) who is being transferred from an NHS Hospital to a residential nursing home, advice and information which you will find of assistance can be found at the following website ww.nhscare.info .