What is NHS-funded nursing care worth?

NHS-Funded Nursing Care is a flat weekly contribution of £235.88 paid straight to a registered nursing home for the nursing element of a resident’s care. It is not means-tested, so savings and income are irrelevant, but it covers only part of a fee that is usually several times larger.

Who gets it, and how

FNC applies where someone lives in a registered nursing home and a registered nurse is involved in their care, but they do not qualify for full CHC. It should be assessed and awarded automatically as part of the CHC and FNC assessment process on admission — but it is regularly missed. If the resident has been in a nursing home without an FNC assessment, ask the home or the GP to arrange one through the Integrated Care Board.

Two limits matter:

• It cannot be received at home. Nursing care at home is funded through CHC instead.
• It stops on a move to a residential home without registered nursing on site. The overall fee changes too, so check the move is clinically appropriate and the new home can meet the person’s needs.

Why an FNC-only decision is worth challenging

FNC and CHC come out of the same assessment, and the difference between them is enormous: CHC covers the entire fee. The Decision Support Tool scores needs across twelve care domains, and someone scoring "priority" in any domain, or a combination of high scores across several, is likely to meet the CHC threshold rather than FNC.

So if the family has been told "FNC only", ask for the completed DST and check the scoring against the care records. Challenge through the ICB local review process, then the Independent Review Panel and, if necessary, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Move quickly. Where a challenge establishes that full CHC should have applied from an earlier date, backdated payments may be recoverable — but every month of delay is another month of fees paid that should have been met by the NHS.