[Owl: this has been known for DECADES and should have been built-in to spending forecasts]

Cuts to budgets for social care. While the NHS budget has been protected, social services for home helps and other care have fallen by 11 per cent in five years. This has caused record levels of “bedblocking”; people with no medical need to be in hospital are stuck there because they can’t be supported at home.

[Owl: the NHS budget has NOT been protected! In real terms, funding has fallen enormously]

Staff shortages. While hospital doctor and nurse numbers have risen over the last decade, they have not kept pace with the rise in demand. Meanwhile 2016 saw record numbers of GP practices close, displacing patients on to A&E departments as they seek medical advice.

[Staff shortages are due to austerity cuts and an exodus of EU workers, who are not replaced. Changing nursing bursaries to loans had exacerbated this serious problem]

Lifestyle factors. Drinking too much alcohol, smoking, a poor diet with not enough fruit and vegetables and not doing enough exercise are all major reasons for becoming unwell and needing to rely on our health services. Growing numbers of overweight children show this problem is currently set to continue.

[Many lifestyle problems are due to the government’s policies: allowing food and drink lobbies to dictate the sugar problem until it is too late, and not putting greater taxes on cigarettes and alcohol as this would reduce government income, shutting Sure Start services that promoted better parenting].

But, despite the criteria being clearly set out in a national framework, differing interpretations of the rules mean your chances of being deemed eligible depend on where you live.

Telegraph Money is aware of hundreds of cases where regional health authorities have applied the rules differently – including some where patients have been approved by one authority and rejected by another just days later.

Ron Laycock, 87, was admitted to Cheltenham General Hospital earlier this year with a vascular condition. Despite living in Wiltshire, he was taken to a specialist unit in Cheltenham, in neighbouring Gloucestershire.

After he was deemed to be “rapidly deteriorating”, medical staff at the hospital approved him for “fast-track” funding under CHC, meaning his care at a nursing home would be paid for.

However, upon arriving at a home in Wiltshire, the county’s clinical commissioning group (CCG) – the NHS body responsible for determining eligibility – refused to recognise the hospital’s decision and rejected his application. This left Mr Laycock’s family having to find the £1,450 weekly cost of the nursing home themselves.

His daughter Becky Nicholls, 44, who works in human resources, said: “My father had Alzheimer’s as well as this condition and then caught pneumonia as well. He stopped eating and taking on fluids. A specialist at the hospital said he was clearly rapidly declining as he had stopped eating but Wiltshire flatly refused to accept that.”

She was refused an explanation from the CCG and said an administrator was rude over the phone. “I was just shocked after that phone call,” she said. “I hadn’t slept for weeks and that night I lay there just hearing her words in my head. My father couldn’t have been released without a care home to go to, so how can he not be eligible?”

She added: “I felt my dad was going to pass away before they took the time to respond.”

The family paid around £5,800 to the care home and Mr Laycock lived there for two weeks before he died. Further to this newspaper’s involvement, Wiltshire CCG acknowledged it had made a mistake and agreed to refund the money backdated to when Mr Laycock was discharged from hospital.

A spokesman said: “Wiltshire CCG takes all patient complaints and concerns seriously and can confirm that appropriate funding is being put in place for the care Mr Laycock received.

“We acknowledge the upset that Mr Laycock’s daughter has experienced and the director of nursing has spoken to her directly to apologise for any distress caused, as well as offering to meet with her in person in order to better understand the issues raised and ensure we learn from this.”

Andrew Farley, from Farley Dwek Solicitors, a firm specialising in CHC disputes, said his company is dealing with around 500 such disputes, many of which are related to cross-border discrepancies. “It’s clear from the national framework that if fast-track is granted, it should only be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances,” he said.

“The decisions should be the same wherever you are in the country, but they aren’t. There appears to be a postcode lottery as to whether you’ll get funding or not.”

CHC funding is available to anyone with “unpredictable” healthcare needs that go “over and above” what a local authority would be expected to provide, Mr Farley said. It is available for everyone, regardless of wealth.

He said families are often bamboozled by the complex nature of the system and suggested that the cash-strapped NHS may be encouraging assessors to deny funding.

“I think there is possibly a hidden agenda; that’s the impression I get having spoken to many families who have been through this process,” he added.

A spokesman for NHS England said: “Spending on CHC is going up as ever more people are being supported, but it’s CCGs that undertake eligibility assessments, using the national framework, based on each individual person’s specific circumstances.