Are you entitled to a refund of care home fees?
If you or a loved one require nursing or residential care it is possible that you may be paying more for that care than you need to.
Our specialist solicitors can assess if this is the case and assist you in seeking a refund of care home fees. We can even help where the person receiving the care has since passed away.
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 people frequently end up paying for their care out of their own savings or are forced to sell their house.
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 an individual’s continuing healthcare needs are and whether they meet the criteria for fully funded care.
Everyone who receives 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 a refund of 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 can arrange for a review of this assessment and help claim a refund of any care home fees that should never have been charged.
We offer a free initial assessment to see if there are likely to be grounds for claiming a refund of some, or all, of the care fees which have been paid by either you, or a loved one.
We can act on behalf of the person receiving care or their next of kin, or attorney.
We are also able to assist in relation to any challenges to the healthcare assessment and its accuracy.
Funding these claims could not be simpler. We offer a range of funding options including fixed fee investigations and “No Win – No Fee”.
