Claiming Care Home Fees
If you or a relative are in long term nursing or residential care you may be paying more for that care than you need to.
It is essential that healthcare needs are accurately assessed as this will affect the amount that has to be paid for care and may also have an impact on eligibility for other benefits. When this assessment is wrong or flawed people frequently end up paying for their care out of their own savings or income.
Our specialist solicitors can assess entitlement to reclaim care home fees that have been overpaid - even where the person receiving the care has since passed away.
It's often assumed that if a person needs nursing or residential care their financial means will be taken into account when assessing how much they will have to pay towards that care. However, this can be a costly assumption to make.
Care home residents whose primary need is healthcare based are entitled to have the full cost of their care met by the NHS. This is referred to as 'fully funded care'. Healthcare needs are assessed by a multi-disciplinary team which is tasked with establishing exactly what someone's continuing healthcare needs are and whether they meet the criteria for fully funded care.
Everyone who is in nursing home or residential care, or who has been in nursing home or residential care or who is going into nursing home or residential care is entitled to have this assessment undertaken. This entitlement even applies where someone is only going into a care home on a temporary basis. The assessment can be carried out retrospectively and can also be carried out where the person receiving care has died. If the healthcare needs of the resident change then they are entitled to a reassessment. This could mean that they no longer have to pay nursing home fees if they now meet the criteria for fully funded care.
There is an entitlement to reclaim nursing home fees and care home fees which were overpaid as a result of an incorrect assessment of the quality and quantity of someone's continuing healthcare needs. Slee Blackwell Solicitors specialise in the area of claiming care home fees, particularly for people in the South West (including Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, and Avon). We can arrange for a review of the healthcare assessment to be carried out and help reclaim care home fees that should never have been charged.
We will carry out a free initial assessment of your care home claim to ascertain if there are grounds for claiming a refund of care home fees, which have been paid by either you or a relative.
We can act on behalf of the person receiving care or their relative or attorney.
We are also able to assist in relation to any challenges to the healthcare assessment and its accuracy.
Funding care home fee claims could not be simpler. We can reclaim care home fees on a 'No Win - No Fee' basis. It doesn't cost a penny, so there's nothing to lose and everything to gain.
For further information about your care home fee claim speak to solicitor John Hasson at our Exeter office on 01392 423000.
