Continuing care

Jane Reynolds

A recent edition of SAGA Magazine follows newspaper and television campaigns providing material about NHS funding for continuing care.1

While applauding the media's raising of awareness about the opportunity to capture the full care costs (whether in a nursing home, residential home, sheltered accommodation or the individual's own home), inadequate coverage has been given to the requirement that the person's condition must be complex, intensive, unpredictable or unstable enough to meet the criteria for the funding from the government. Individuals may not meet the criteria laid down by the relevant strategic health authority — either by dint of their mental condition, or their physical condition, or a combination of the two — it is regrettable that families' hopes may have been raised inappropriately.

In the absence (so far) of national criteria, it would be worthwhile for GPs to obtain the continuing care criteria from their strategic health authority. They will then see the detail that describes the necessary complexity, intensity, instability or unpredictability of a patient's condition.

From time to time, families pursue their case about their relative stating that the patient's GP has assured them that the criteria are met. While this may sometimes be a robust opinion, regrettably it is not always so. The task of the local panels assessing applications, and the subsequent review panels at strategic health authority level (the ‘second bite of the cherry’) is therefore made more complicated, if after careful and sympathetic consideration, the individual's condition falls short of fulfilling the criteria.

As chairman of two Strategic Health Authorities' Review Panels, I recognise that people will only hear what they choose to hear, or want to hear: GPs' opinions may have been more equivocal than families state! But it would be greatly appreciated if GPs could make the time to obtain and read the Continuing Care criteria, so that they are in a position to give as informed a view as possible regarding this important matter. We have a shared task, to ensure that those who are eligible for the full funding of their care are enabled to obtain this help as speedily and as easily as possible.