Quick tip - find what you need in Continuing Healthcare guidelines

Are you looking for a specific paragraph in one of the Continuing Healthcare guidance or assessment documents?

We’re often asked if we can provide specific page and paragraph references from the various Continuing Healthcare guidance documents, to help families pull together a case for funding.

The main guidelines for NHS Continuing Healthcare are in the National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing Care.

Make sure you read this document. The more familiar you are with them, the better your chances of succeeding in an NHS Continuing Healthcare assessment or appeal.

Make sure you also read the main assessment ‘tools’ – the Decision Support Tool, the Checklist and the Fast Track Pathway Tool.  There’s no shortcut in that respect.

Even if you have someone acting for you (e.g. a solicitor or specialist advisor), it’s still a very good idea to be familiar with the guidelines and the assessment tools yourself – because few people know your relative like you do. Your input in any funding case is vital.

You’ll find links to the NHS Contining Healthcare guidelines and assessment tools here.

However, even once you’ve read these documents, it’s still useful to be able to pull out specific paragraphs quickly – whenever you need to – to support your case. It enables you to quote the official guidelines back to any assessor who is giving you incorrect information or failing to follow the proper process.

A quick way to find what you need in Continuing Healthcare guidelines

Everyone has a different level of ability when it comes to using the internet and computers. If you’re not already familiar with the ‘search and find’ function, keep reading…

‘Search and find’ is a very easy way to find specific relevant paragraphs in any document (no matter what the document is) – even if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.

These steps will help you:

Go to the page on the gov.uk website with all of the Continuing Healthcare assessment ‘tools’ and guidance documents.

Now let’s imagine we want to search for something in the National Framework – just as an example.

Click on the link to the National Framework (the first link next to the heading ‘Documents’ on the gov.uk page).

You should now see the National Framework document. Save that document to a convenient place on your computer.

Now open that same document from your computer – from that convenient place where you’ve just saved it.

Notice that in the top right hand corner of the document there’s now a little search box with a small magnifying glass icon. It may look slightly different, depending on the type of document and/or the computer system you’re using – but it’ll look something like in the images here.

In that search box you can type any word or phrase you choose. Your computer will then search the whole document and provide you with a list of relevant paragraphs where that word occurs.

It’s really quick – and it means you can more easily and quickly pull together some of the arguments you need to support your Continuing Healthcare case.

Let’s go through an example…

Let’s suppose you’re new to Continuing Healthcare and you’re trying to get to grips with what should happen.

You realise that someone should be coordinating everything but you don’t know how that works. So let’s imagine you want to find out what the Continuing Healthcare coordinator is supposed to be doing.

We’ll search the National Framework for information to help us:

Using the process outlined above, save the National Framework document onto your computer, and then open it from your computer. Type the word ‘coordinator’ into the search box (top right) on your document.

You will immediately see one of the following:

1. On the left hand side you’ll see a list of about 15 pages where the word ‘coordinator’ occurs. Simply click on each one in turn (on the left  hand side) and, in the main part of the document, you’ll see the corresponding paragraph where the word is mentioned.

Find the paragraphs that support or help you most, and use them to quote the NHS’s own guidance back to them if they fail to have a coordinator in place and/or fail to do things properly.

Simply click on each paragraph in turn and you’ll be taken immediately to that same paragraph in the actual document.

2. Alternatively, you might see the word ‘coordinator’ highlighted within the document itself. You’ll also see two ‘arrows’ (one pointing left and one pointing right) next to the actual search box.

Use the right hand arrow to jump to the next highlighted word. (Use the left one to go back.) Use the paragraphs in the same way as in point 1.

Here’s a further example…

Again, we’re using the National Framework document. You can also type phrases into the search box – rather than just one word:

Let’s suppose you’ve been told there needs to be a Best Interests meeting to decide the best course of action for your relative.

You may not know much about Best Interests meetings, and so by going through this ‘search and find’ process, you can very quickly arm yourself with the information you need from any given document.

Go through the same steps as before and type the phrase ‘best interests’ into the search box.

You’ll quickly see 11 page references on the left hand side where the phrase ‘best interests’ is mentioned. (You could also type in the phrase ‘best interest’ (without the final ‘s’)).

You can of course use this process for any document – it doesn’t have to be about Continuing Healthcare! – but it’s particularly useful for pulling information together quickly to support your case.

28 links to help you with NHS Continuing Healthcare funding