A care home threatened a grieving family with bailiffs after wrongly charging them for a dead woman's "outstanding care fees".
The woman was living in a care home in St Helens and paying for some of it through a "top-up fee" before she died in April 2020. One year after she died, the woman's family received a bill from the care home for £2,669 for "unpaid fees" on the mum's account, despite thinking they had paid everything that was owed.
The family asked for a breakdown of the debt, which showed fees from a time where the woman was not a resident at the care home. The family disputed the fee's and the care provider threatened to call in a debt collection agency on May 21, 2021.
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It wasn't until almost one year later, close the the second anniversary of when the mum died, when they received a further bill of £168.43. The family said this caused "distress" to them in a difficult time.
The woman's daughter in law raised a complaint about this to St Helens Council, who conducted its own investigation into the alleged debts. The care provider admitted it had made a mistake, claiming the payment made in 2018 had not been added to the system until April 2021.
However, the care home did say £168.43 worth of top-up fees was still owing on the account and requested that the family make the payment. The council said it asked the care provider to waive the remaining fee due to the inconvenience caused to the family, but they refused.
The daughter in law then contacted the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman after St Helens Council said they could not assist any further. An anonymous report into the matter found St Helens Council was at fault for wrongly billing the family.
The report read: "One year after Ms X’s mother-in-law passed away, the care home acting on the Council’s behalf issued the family with a bill for a significant amount of money that they did not owe and threatened to pass the account to a debt collection agency. Failing to give reasonable notice of a payment due was not in line with CQC Regulation 19.
"The provider also failed to manage its accounts properly as the amount owed was incorrect. The Council was at fault. This fault caused avoidable distress to the family at an already difficult time.
"The Council took appropriate action to remedy this fault by investigating the care provider and determining that the majority of the fees requested were due to an error by the care provider. However, the Council said that the outstanding amount from the April 2022 bill was still due and the matter was now between Ms X and the care provider.
"The Council should not have passed this responsibility onto Ms X, who had already been inconvenienced by challenging the earlier year’s mistaken bill. The Council was at fault."
The Ombudsman has ordered St Helens Council and the care provider to apologise to the family, the council to pay the alleged outstanding £168.43 itself and carry out a full investigation into why the family was incorrectly billed. The council are also required to make improvements to the systems used for billing residents to ensure the same doesn't happen again.
According to the Ombudsman the council has agreed to provide them with evidence it has complied with the above actions.
St Helens Council was contacted for comment.
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