An elderly woman with Alzheimer’s was forced to use her life savings for her own care after her family claimed that NHS officials “cut and paste” other patients’ reports into her assessment to indicate she did not qualify for financial support.
Hilda Bowler died in 2020, aged 92, after she was denied tens of thousands of pounds for her care by after the NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) deemed her condition was not severe enough for full cover.
However, now Lincolnshire ICB has been forced to repay Mrs Bowler’s bereaved family due to botched assessments that her family say included other patients details.
Mrs Bowler’s son-in-law Steve Panton said she was not able to communicate with her family, feed herself or even brush her own hair due to the severity of her condition.
Mr Panton said: “As well as raising her two children, Hilda worked full-time running a transport café. She paid all her taxes and never ever claimed benefits. It is an utter disgrace that when she was at her most vulnerable and in the grip of this terrible disease, the NHS tried to deny her the financial support that we have now proved she was entitled to.”
When Mrs Bowler was assessed for NHS funding for her care, a task contracted out to private assessors, the initial report said she had “fully participated” in the meeting and ruled her condition was not serious enough to warrant full coverage
Mr Panton said there were several issues with that report.
“She was not at the meeting and she was not able to consent to the meeting going ahead, she couldn’t form a sentence, she couldn’t ask for a cup of tea, she couldn’t comb her hair – sadly she was completely helpless because of the ravages of this diseases,” Mr Panton told The Independent.
“There was a whole sentence written about a male patient [in her assessment]”.
That sentence in the report, seen by The Independent, said: “Staff to anticipate all his needs and risk assess on his behalf and in his best interests”.
The initial assessment in 2018 and a follow-up in 2019 found Mrs Bowler did not meet enough of the key indicators to qualify for fully supported care.
Mr Panton said: “It meant that Hilda’s diminishing life savings were dribbling away at the rate of hundreds of pounds a week,” he said.
The family spent six years fighting for the ICB to acknowledge its mistakes and return her money, after an independent review in 2023 found Mrs Bowler met multiple key indicators and should have had her care fully covered.
“Put simply, for full funding to be agreed, we needed two ticks in areas that are used to judge a patient’s needs, such as skin and cognition problems. The two NHS assessments that were eventually discredited gave us only one tick,” Mr Panton said.
“The Liaison Care panel gave us eight ticks. The only explanation is that the NHS-led assessments were focused on saving money, which is yet another breach of the rules, whereas the independent assessment panel based their judgement purely on the evidence.”
A spokesperson for the NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board said: “We have been in regular contact with the Bowler family regarding this matter since concerns were first shared six years ago. In order to address these, NHS England first undertook a review and the [Integrated Care Board] commissioned an additional review by an independent body to ensure impartiality.
“We fully accepted that the family should have received a different service from us, and we remain sorry this did not happen originally. We have corrected processes to avoid any repeat of this experience, both in terms of improvements to our service and by remedying the financial impact for the family involved.
“Whilst this case has now been closed, we would again like to express our apologies to the family for this matter.”
Mr Panton said he wants other families to know this has happened in case they were in similar situations.
He said: “The rules governing how these assessments should be conducted are clearly set out by the NHS in a rule book called the National Framework. It states that assessments have to be thorough and accurate.
“Cribbing material from other reports falls far short of this requirement. Anyone subjected to this disgraceful practice who was refused funding can now demand new assessments because any report cobbled together in this way must surely be invalid.”
