RICS Appointed OS:Property / NHS Livewell Southwest Ltd. (561)

To the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary:
For Clarity - Attempt 561.

561) The Anonymous Desk Top Reviewer.

Dear Mr Clark,

The 2012 National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS funded Nursing Care Consultative Document stated that;
"The Government is determined to establish a simpler, fairer and more coherent system of assessment to determine the eligibility for full NHS funding of long-term care which can be applied consistently across England."
(www.webarchive.nationalarchices.gov.uk)

Simpler, fairer, more coherent and consistently applied assessments across the whole of England by a determined Government is quite a commitment by politicians to deliver justice to the people of this country.

And needless to say it hasn't happened. It immediately veered off course shortly after it was launched.

Dr Louise Irvine's, "The Scandal of NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding" paints a more accurate picture of what is really happening,
"There is an area of healthcare that the general public in England does not know much about and that our politicians would like to keep that way. It is only when you have a relative with a serious long term health condition that you discover the complex, complex and inhumane system that you have to go through to get NHS funding for the care your loved one needs."
(www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-louise-irvine/nhs-funding)

The reality is that the system is complex, unfair and inhumane and that politicians want to keep it that way. Otherwise things would be very different.

I agree with Dr Irvine. She describes the system as it as it is. A shambles. An extortion racket.

The system in  operation at Livewell Southwest Ltd even has an Anonymous Desk Top Reviewer although its CEO, Professor Waite, believes we should have known who that anonymous person was only he isn't prepared to tell us.

So no transparency or accountability there.

On top of all that the NHS, and for reasons known only to itself, does not keep data on the decisions it arrives at. As a consequence of this state of anarchy all sorts of practices that do not work in the patient's interests have been allowed to incubate and flourish.

For example,
"...there is no definition in law of a Primary health Need. It means a culture has developed where NHS funding assessors seem to apply the their own subjective interpretation of the guidelines onto funding decisions."
(www.caretobedifferent,co.uk/paying-care-home-fees/the-coughlan-case)

Hugely important funding decisions are being made by anonymous and unaccountable assessors who can, and often do, base their judgements on subjective interpretations, spite, whim or fancy. What is more those assessors know that their decisions aren't being logged or monitored. So instead of the fair system consistently applied we have one that has become an unaccountable post code lottery, inconsistently applied.

This is totally unacceptable.

The more one discovers about the National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS Funded Nursing Care, the more scandalous it becomes.

Q. Mr Clark, when are you going to step, challenge the vested interests of the NHS and right the wrong of appalling decisions made by the Livewell Southwest Ltd's Anonymous Desk Top Reviewer and all the other Anonymous Desk Top Reviewers throughout England?

Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert.