Care home deadline looms

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Time running out for care home fees claims

The Welsh Assembly Government has announced that its scheme to reimburse wrongly paid care home fees prior to April 2003 will be coming to an end on the 4 December 2009.

In 1999, the Court of Appeal ruled that if a patient’s primary need is for healthcare and this is the reason for them being in a nursing home, then the NHS should pay for the full cost of their care. The Courts and the Health Service Ombudsman has been critical of NHS bodies using over-restrictive criteria that do not meet legal requirement, wrongly denying people the funding they are entitled to.

The scheme was established following the Health Ombudsman report which advised Local Health Boards to review cases from April 1996 to date. If a person has been contributing towards their care fees from 1996, they may be entitled to a reimbursement of their fees. This is the case even if the person who was cared for has since died.

The scheme which is managed by Powys Local Health Board has paid out over £18 million pounds to over 500 Welsh families since 2004 in wrongly paid nursing home fees.

Lisa Morgan, Associate solicitor with the specialist nursing care team at Hugh James states that thousands of people across Wales have been wrongly charged for nursing care and in many cases, they have been forced to sell their family home to pay. Lisa Morgan says: “It is important that people are aware of this new deadline. This is their last chance to ask the Local Health Board for a review of care home fees paid before April 2003”.

“Nursing Home fees can escalate often leading to individuals having to sell their home to pay for care. Individuals or their families may be entitled to thousands of pounds in reimbursement. I acted for the late Mrs Eyton-Jones who was in the care from 1998 to 2007 and was reimbursed over £165,000 in wrongly paid care home fees.”

In England the deadline was introduced in November 2007. It is important that families in Wales are aware that this is their last chance to reclaim these fees.