Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to take steps to reduce the growth in spending on NHS continuing healthcare without reducing the number of patients who are eligible for continuing healthcare funds; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England’s NHS Continuing Healthcare Strategic Improvement Programme aims to provide fair access to NHS Continuing Healthcare in a way which ensures better outcomes, better experience, and better use of resources.

The programme will not change the threshold for eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare, which is based on a multidisciplinary assessment of needs as set out in the National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing Care, together with secondary legislation to give statutory effect to the eligibility criteria and the decision-making processes.

There should be no quota or cap on access to NHS Continuing Healthcare funding and the programme does not aim to reduce spending on NHS Continuing Healthcare, but to reduce the rate of growth of expenditure. The projection is for spending on NHS Continuing Healthcare to increase by over 20% by 2020/21, or an average of approximately 3.9% per year.