Reclaim Care Home Costs for Free- New MSE guide

caper7 wrote: »

Update:

In an uninformed panic on the 26 September, I sent a brief email outlining my situation to the relevant PCT's, I also phoned two of them.
I have been assured by email and on the phone that this is sufficient in order to meet the deadline, and that for the form itself there is no official deadline.
Having briefly scanned the forum and hearing that apparently people were having to request Gp/hospital/care home records etc... the task seemed daunting and depressing.
However this morning a man from one of the PCT's called, he was having trouble finding out which GP my father was registered at when in one of the homes and had decided it might just be quicker to phone and ask me.
I took the opportunity of asking about did I have to go getting all these records for a claim, and he said no it was their job.
Initially relieved, thinking I would just fill out the form to the best of my ability and they can check all the records... I then thought that I might also need the records in order to do the most thorough job of the form and I remember one of the care home files was a paper file (not computerised).
So will I be hindering things by also requesting documents, we can't both have the file?
And as I have been typing this, the thought occurs to me that I am being naive, are they wanting to get the files in order to refute any claim, would they remove any key documents? Or am I now being too cynical. I really came to this thinking facts would be facts and things would simply be assessed or reassessed according to the criteria.
Mostly, I am just shocked at the speed with which they have got on to things.
Realise I am rambling somewhat, just can't quite get my head round the process...

You would be given photocopies only if you requested the medical records and it should not cause a problem for either the PCT or the progress of any claim. You might find that records are incomplete but this is more about ineffiency and decentralisation of records than deliberate tampering. We had to ask a couple of times for additional records to be found when we discovered gaps in the copies of records received. Thank you for posting the form which I was pleased to hear was not required for the deadline.

I phoned 2 PCT offices regarding a claim and they didnt know what I was talking about. They said it was nothing to do with them and they didnt know who I should contact. and they dont have email addresses.

dishmop wrote: »

I phoned 2 PCT offices regarding a claim and they didnt know what I was talking about. They said it was nothing to do with them and they didnt know who I should contact. and they dont have email addresses.

Google a few key words such as:

continuing healthcare deadline

along with the name of your PCT. It will almost certainly bring up an email address.

In answer to Doc N above - I can only say that I found Hugh James very good at the "shall we take this case on stage" I sent them alot of paperwork but we didnt hear anything, they were trying to get the claim paid for via an old home insurance policy so it got stuck in the insurance company's system for a while, when I chased it via both parties myself, the letters that had been done by Hugh James didnt have the correct information, i.e. when they wrote to the insurers they said it was a car insurance policy not a house insurance policy, so clearly the insurers would have been confused! anyway, the long and short of it was after months, Hugh James said no - they wouldnt take the case on a no win no fee basis but chargeable per hour, which was no good to us, as ours would have been a moderately small claim anyway. If you see my above post on page 9 (I think) I mention a firm that have accepted us on a no win no fee basis which is Nash and Co in Plymouth. Unfortunately, this probably is too late now for you, not unless of course, you have already lodged a letter with the PCT yourself - I have been impressed so far but early days and it will give me peace if they cant win and I wont have to have all the files back, which is stressful just looking at them, sure most would agree. good luck to everyone, hope the PCTs roll over like the banks did, and realise they cant treat people so badly when it is an entitlement as set out by the Dept of Health. will report back as and when I know more, but have been told it will take a long time.

I had sometime over the weekend, and read through this thread, and wondered if it would be worth revisiting/ having a more detailed discussion about the differing interpretations regarding “what is a health need”. This may well have happened in the previous thread – apologies I read much of it, but not all. I just think anyone coming new to the process could be helped by knowing that the way words are used is not as might assumed. This wish to explore has also come from my shouting at the telly, when lawyers etc. have come on and emphasised the phrase “primary health need” as if everyone understands it and is talking the same language. I am also very aware that many on this thread have had a great deal more expertise and experience than me, and it would be good to share views.

I think for me I continue to be amazed at how far the assessing teams’ definition of “health need” is from that which would be understood by the general public and by the majority of those people coming to the process.

I think the majority of people would assume a health need was because someone was ill…. Perhaps very ill, but that may well only relate to the nature and intensity criterion that are used to assess. What I found much more difficult to understand was the complexity and unpredictability criterion. That is being ill is not enough, the illness must result in complex problems and those problems must be unstable….I am trying to get a working definition for me to refer to as my father is in a dementia home due to Alzheimer’s but I am not yet attempting to claim (my mother had the funding). For me it is something about “if this care wasn’t happening would they be in hospital and more than that would they probably need to be on high dependency”. So it was not the fact that my mother was dying (that was stable and following a pattern)– it was the fact that she was doubly incontinent and might fall over at any time that seemed to be the deciding factor, and as with a previous poster who said her relatives leg ulcers were the deciding factor, it just does not seem logical to a reasonable person.

Anyway, as has been discussed before forewarned if forearmed, and thought it might be helpful if other “laypeople” discussed their working definitions!