HL Deb 09 December 2004 vol 667 c66WS
Lord Warner

My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Community (Dr Stephen Ladyman) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement today.

Today I am commissioning the development of a national consistent approach to assessment for fully funded National Health Service continuing care and announce the publication of the independent report on continuing care entitled, Continuing Health Care: Review, revision and restitution.

I would like to acknowledge the work during 2003–04 carried out in bringing together more than 95 health authority criteria into the legally compliant 28 strategic health authority (SHA) criteria which exist today. Having achieved this objective, significantly improved arrangements for assessing new cases, and made good progress with the retrospective review of cases where people have been wrongly denied funding in the past, it is now practical to move forward and improve the system further.

The department will work with the SHAs to build on all the good work done so far. Learning from good practice, we will produce a national approach to continuing care to improve consistency and ease of understanding. We want to help to achieve these aims. This does not constitute a break from past practice. As I have said before, all the current criteria are fair and legal. It will however make the process easier to understand for practitioners and patients alike.