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How to improve the Care Home market
This article explores the background thinking to BestCareHome.co.uk to help care seekers and care providers understand what we are trying to do with the site. This might be a bit more ‘theoretical’ than other articles on our Blog so move onto another article if you get bored!
The author of BestCareHome, Richard Phillips has worked in the care sector for 20 years. This included several years as Operations Director of national registered social landlord and responsibility for 8 registered care homes. In this capacity he became interested in how the market for care homes worked, and all to often worked poorly.
Care Home placements are purchased, usually on a client-by-client basis, in a market place of public, private and not for profit providers. Providers offer and advertise their services directly to the public and to Social Workers / Care Managers who work with clients (and on behalf of the public purse) to make decisions about placements.
The person purchasing the service often has relatively little reliable information on which to base his or her decisions. Many providers make excellent and informative marketing information available, though this will always present the best view of a house (and we should not criticise providers of care homes for this – it is their job!).
The regulator, CQC provides an excellent inspection process and detailed reports. The main problem with these reports from the point of view of the person seeking help is that they are difficult to read and absorb in the process of comparing a dozen or more houses. In practice, it seems that many people only read the CQC reports of their first choice of house, if any at all.
Most ‘buyers’ of these care services do not therefore have sufficient information to make such a vital decision. This is therefore a market where buyers (and arguably purchasers as well) have poor market knowledge.
We believe that a consequence of this poor market knowledge is that many decisions about Care Home placements are made based on pretty arbitrary criteria. For Care Managers, this might simply be habit or brand loyalty. For families it might be a single recommendation of a family friend (though first hand recommendations are incredibly important and should not be dismissed).
If the Care Home sector is to work well, the best houses will stay open and the worst houses will close or get taken over by the people who run the best houses. It is inevitable that the best houses with the best facilities should be able to charge a little more; it is not good for anyone if sub-standard houses with poor facilities get away with being expensive.
A partial solution to these problems is to radically increase the flow of information and market knowledge between purchasers and providers. We believe that the BestCareHome.co.uk website helps bridge that gap.
The key information that we provide is extracted from the inspection reports provided by the regulator. The ‘value add’ of the BestCareHome site is to analyse and summarise these reports, and in particular looking at the three year track record and providing a ranking of Care Homes based on quality.
Written: 05/07/2009