I think you can appeal. But the cards are stacked against the families IMO.
OUr experience was this:
my DGM (Mother's mother) had dementia. GOt steadily worse over 5 years. Was cared for at home, but prone to repeated UTIs and so on.
Had massive UTI which sent her into hospital. At the time, was completely incoherent. Stopped eating and then stopped drinking. Was dying (she was 93). Immobile. No drip.
At the point where she had not eaten for 10 days and had had nothing to drink for 4, the hospital declared that she should be moved into a care home (forgotten the acronym, but a dementia care home). OUr take on it was that she was dying and had ongoing medical needs. Social services and NHS had a spat - to-ing and fro-ing. She lost the continuing care case because according to them she didn't need CC. At this point (a Thursday) we were told by SS to organise a care home for her so she could be transferred next day (this is wrong - spoke to Age Concern, and the SS should have been at least assisting us, but preferably sourcing such care).
We appealed. She died on the Friday. At which point she had been well over a week without fluid and much longer without food, and at the time she was having her case refused, she was entering into the final stages of dying - breathing changing, confusion, so on). She was out of it, but distressed, and the fantastic doc gave her morphine.
She won the appeal on the Monday after she died.
Bitter? Yes - I think that the care of our elderly is shocking. What my mother went through in the last week was bad enough, watching her die, having had 5 years of the dementia, but the money wrangling by the NHS bureaucrats and SS just made everything worse.
The nurses and doctors were fantastic and every experience I have had with the NHS and my young children has been amazing. But what happened to my Granny was just not good enough and was downright cruel given her age and her frailty.