DEMENTIA IS NOW THE CAUSE OF ONE IN 8 DEATHS
As Mail campaigns on care costs, shock figures reveal true extent of crisis
DEMENTIA is to blame for one in eight deaths, shocking figures revealed yesterday.
Nearly 70,000 lives were lost to the illness last year – 13 per cent up on the 61,000 of 2015.
Experts warn the figure will keep increasing because people are living longer and conditions such as Alzheimer’s are still untreatable.
The death rate highlights the urgency of a Daily Mail campaign to end a scandal in which countless sufferers have to sell their homes to pay for care. More than 850,000 Britons have dementia, a progressive disease that kills by damaging the brains of victims.
The Office for National Statistics said the illness was responsible for 12.8 per cent of the 541,589 registered deaths in England and Wales
last year. It has been the nation’s biggest killer since 2016. The rise in the number of sufferers is partly down to people living longer, according to the ONS.
A better understanding of dementia and improved diagnosis is also likely to have increased reporting.
Campaigners said the figures must act as a wake-up call to the Government, which has been accused of ignoring dementia in favour of illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. It invests £82.5million a year on research into the disease compared with £269million for cancer.
‘One person develops dementia in the UK every three minutes and there are still far too many facing a future alone, without adequate support,’ said Sally Copley of the Alzheimer’s Society.
‘We need to act now to tackle the biggest health crisis of our time. We need the Government to prioritise dementia with a dedicated NHS Dementia Fund and invest in a plan for long-term social care reform.’
Dr Alison Evans, head of policy at Alzheimer’s Research UK, warned a million Britons could be living with dementia by 2021.
She added: ‘Without more research and better treatments, we will continue to see dementia burden our health system, overwhelm our social care resources, and steal our loved ones from us.’
The Daily Mail launched a campaign last month calling for a cross-party solution to the crisis of sufferers selling homes to pay for care.
More than 219,000 readers have signed the Mail’s petition calling on Boris Johnson to take action.
Actress Barbara Windsor, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014, yesterday wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister asking him to fix the system.
Dianne Steene, a solicitor at Steene Law and specialist in legal matters relating to care fees, said: ‘Too many people are ending their days having seen their legacies decimated by care fees – often because local authorities have misunderstood the law or because they happened to have the wrong postcode.
‘The fact that Alzheimer’s and dementia are now the leading cause of death in the UK underlines the need for the Government to address the care fees crisis with renewed urgency.’
In the two years since the Government promised to publish a social care plan, families have been forced to find £15billion to support relatives with the illness.
Middle- class families are among the hardest hit because free care is given only to those with less than £23,250 in savings or housing wealth.
Miss Copley added: ‘ Every day we hear from people who are struggling to access good quality care that they need, often having to pay for it themselves, whatever their stage of dementia. Tragically this doesn’t get any better in a person’s final days, meaning there is often still a huge financial burden on families even then, the most distressing of times.’
Yesterday’s report said dementia was the leading cause of death for women and the second biggest killer for men, after heart disease. For the sexes combined it is the biggest cause of deaths. Dr Hilda Hayo of Dementia UK said: ‘This is further clear- cut evidence of why dementia needs to be made a priority.
‘Rising incidences of dementia may point to increased public understanding around the condition but it does not diminish the often intense emotional and practical strain faced by families.
‘The Government needs to do more to integrate the creaking social and healthcare systems.
‘More access to funding for social care and specialist dementia support will undoubtedly help to relieve the pressures on a struggling NHS and allow more families to live well with dementia.’
The same ONS report showed that drug overdoses have overtaken suicides as the biggest killer of middle-aged men
Suicide had been the most common form of death in the 35-49 age group. But drug overdoses and accidently poisonings have now taken over as Britain’s nascent opiate crisis begins to take hold.
There were 1,336 such deaths in 2018, 12.5 per cent of the total.
THOUSANDS of dementia patients may needlessly be selling their homes after being wrongly denied NHS funding, legal experts claim.
Solicitors who specialise in fighting for funding say not enough people know that the NHS will pay their care fees if they have severe medical needs.
And of those who apply for NHS continuing healthcare (CHC) funding, many are unfairly refused, the lawyers claim.
Complaints from families denied the care money have tripled in four years, according to figures from law firm Nockolds.
In the worst cases, local councils are agreeing to funding and then later taking it away, despite the patient’s health deteriorating.
The NHS will pay for nursing care only if you have complex, severe or unpredictable health needs, including advanced dementia.
But solicitors firm Farley Dwek estimates that more than 100,000 people are unaware they should be receiving the NHS funding and may be entitled to reclaim money they’ve spent on care. The firm says this means they may be unnecessarily spending around £4.8 billion of their own money on fees.
Director Andrew Farley says: ‘Millions of people have had to sell their homes to pay for care when had they been considered for continuing healthcare funding, they may have qualified.’
The Mail is campaigning to ensure dementia patients are never forced to sell their homes to pay for care.
At present, local councils will contribute to the cost of your care only if your income, savings and assets total less than £23,250.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has backed our campaign and promised to fix the social care crisis ‘ once and for all’.
Local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for assessing whether a patient is entitled to continuing healthcare funding. The patient is typically reassessed every year, so funding can be later withdrawn.
The funding will cover the cost of your care — whether it be in your home or in a care home. Weekly fees for dementia patients can cost more than £1,000.
Money Mail told last year how local health authority figures showed a 272 pc rise in the number of people being stripped of CHC funding after reassessment.
Tim Davies, managing director of Compass CHC, says his legal firm receives around 1,000 queries a month from people worried they were needlessly paying for care.
‘Many people aren’t even told this funding exists,’ he says.
Requests to the NHS for independent reviews of decisions not to fund have risen from 383 in 2014/15 to 949 in 2018/19, according to the figures from Nockolds.
Daniel Winter, a partner at the firm, says: ‘ The decisions on eligibility are not consistent across clinical commissioning groups, which has left chronically ill patients facing uncertainty. The CCGs and the NHS are tightening their belts. Their interpretation of the guidelines has become more and more restrictive, resulting in some obviously deserving cases being rejected.’
Claire Davis, director of Solicitors for the Elderly, says: ‘Those who qualify as being eligible for NHS continuing healthcare tend to be people with a very high level of healthcare needs, requiring support and assistance on an ongoing basis. A huge fear for those who’ve qualified would be having the care taken away.’
Vivian Blowey, 86, has vascular dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and is wheelchair bound. But her local CCG will not grant her NHS funding, so around £200,000 of her life savings has been eaten up by care fees.
Her son, Kevin, says Vivian’s flat in Dartford, Kent, has already been sold to meet her care home bills of £3,780 a month. Kevin, 63, a retired jeweller, has had three appeals against the decision refused by NHS Dartford Gravesham and Swanley CCG. ‘I think they’ll only pay out when they are forced to,’ he says.
A spokesman for Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley CCG says: ‘Our appeal process is fair, robust and transparent and follows the framework set down by the Department of Health.’
Lucy Hutchinson, 88, devoted her working life to the NHS in her career as a medical secretary. But now her daughter, Anne, is fighting for the NHS to pay her £5,000 monthly nursing home bills.
Lucy suffers from rare neurological disorder stiff-person syndrome as well as having Alzheimer’s and diabetes. She cannot move or feed herself without help.
When she moved into a nursing home in late 2017, Anne applied for continuing healthcare funding, but was told Lucy was ineligible. Anne, of Fareham, Hants, is appealing the decision, but fears her mother may not live long enough to benefit.
Anne, 54, says: ‘ My mother worked for the NHS but we are seeing a far darker side to it.’
A spokesman for NHS Southampton City CCG says it does not comment on individual cases,
Colville Lobendhan has needed round-the-clock care since he was paralysed in a gardening accident 13 years ago. But Croydon CCG stripped him of funding last year.
And as his pensions pay more than £23,000 a year, the grandfatherof- seven has been refused local authority funding, too.
Son Treville, 55, who is appealing the decision, says: ‘He is dependent on 24-hour care. Everything has to be done for him.’
A NHS Croydon CCG spokesman says Mr Lobendhan is eligible to receive NHS-funded nursing care of £165.56 a week. She adds: ‘Patients’ needs can and do change, so all cases are reviewed annually.’
A NHS spokesman says: ‘ NHS spending on continuing healthcare is increasing and it is for local health groups to manage assessments based on demand in their area.’