5 Myths About Continuing Healthcare Funding
Here are 5 common myths about Continuing Healthcare Funding:
1. ‘I have been told that You have to be at death’s door to receive it’
We wish we had a pound for every time someone has said this to us! It is not true that you have to be but, of course, if you are, then you are likely to qualify for Fast Track funding if you are not expected to live longer than 12 weeks. However, there are many thousands of people who are in receipt of CHC funding and then go on to receive it for several years.
2. ‘I have been told that there is no point in applying for this funding because the NHS in my area are so short of money that they don’t ever grant the funding to anyone’
This is total nonsense! If you qualify for NHS CHC funding, then the NHS is legally obliged to provide it – ‘free at the point of delivery’ in accordance with the NHS Constitution. Don’t be fobbed off.
3. ‘I have been told that there is no point even being assessed for this funding because my father will never qualify for it’
Nonsense – if you are being discharged from hospital into long term care, then you are entitled to be assessed for CHC funding, and at least the first stage of the process – the Checklist assessment – should be carried out once discharged from hospital. You are, of course, entitled to request a CHC assessment even if you are transferring into long-term care from your own home.
4. ‘You have to be in a Nursing Home to qualify’
The setting of the care is irrelevant to whether or not you qualify for CHC funding. It is true that the likelihood of qualifying is higher if you are in a nursing home (rather than a residential home) by virtue of the fact that you have higher levels of need that require the input of a nurse. But it is not a bar to qualifying if you are not in a nursing home.
5. Are you still able to apply for NHS CHC Funding if you have savings and own a house?
Yes! This is one of the most commonly held misapprehensions about NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding. The assessment of eligibility is based on your health care needs and the care which is required to manage those needs and has nothing to do with your personal wealth or finances. A financial assessment should only be requested by the local authority once the issue of eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare funding has been considered.
My husband entered a nursing home 14 months ago with dementia and terminal rectal cancer. After a review for CHC funding he was turned down but was awarded Funding Nursing Care. I was told that he would receive full funding at the end of life. In September last year he had an infections and the home suggested I visit my husband. The doctor had said that another infection could be fatal. He had a further infection in February, on each occasion as he was really unwell. On 16th March they sent for me as he was deteriorating rapidly. He died on 23rd March. I was told that he would get CHC funding for the last week of his life. How can that be right when he had been slowly dying for months.
As long as we have despotic public sector bodies, ombudsmen and governments that have no integrity, no transparency, no accountability and parliamentarians that do nothing, remembering that these public bodies are supposed to serve the citizen, where whistleblowers are victimised, where organised public inquiries, Class Actions, Mass Tort Actions take more than 20 years to be heard, where crucial information is redacted and corrupted, where our legal system is neutered, and a cancerous cover-up culture that exists, what hope is there for justice, the rule of law or democracy? It seems the only way to force a change is the Irish way, putting petrol bombs in the hands of our children !!! Emigration is also an option but will we be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire? We have paid for health care and it is a denial of a substantial legitimate expectation by fraudulent means by the NHS and Local Authorities.
My mother has been self funding her care home placement since April 2020. Her Parkinson’s has deteriorated to the point where she now has zero mobility. Her levels of confusion and anxiety have increased significantly and her behaviour has become so unpredictable that the nursing staff have told us she now falls into the nursing care side of things as opposed to residential.
The social worker looking after mums case is superb and is going above and beyond in trying to get mum CHC assessed. Despite a positive checklist Virgin Care, who are responsible for carrying out the assessment, are rejecting the social workers requests. The first time because mum was not ‘medically optimised’, and the second time because mums medication is not ‘Titrated’. In order to trigger eligibility for FNC whilst we fight for CHC a health needs assessment has been requested four times, but Virgin Care have ignored all four requests.
The system is set up to be deliberately obstructive.
It’s truly shameful that the National Framework is not followed and the Standing Rules, which are the legal requirements all CCG’s must adhere to, are wilfully ignored.
What really gets my goat is that the people at the top who are responsible for denying sick and vunerable people the care they deserve and then stripping them of everything they’ve worked for are then rewarded with knighthoods and bonuses. What a world we live in.