Care Management Matters magazine has published a feature on the parlous financial state of the UK care sector written by our Business Risk Adviser, Nick Hood.
“Unfortunately, little attention was paid to the fundamental flaws in the UK’s residential care home business model. These have since been ruthlessly exposed by the savage reductions in fees paid by local authorities for publicly-funded residents and the inexorable increases in costs such as staffing, arising from a scarcity of nurses and rises, first in the National Minimum Wage and, most recently, the new National Living Wage (NLW). At the same time, a string of scandals, such as Winterbourne View, served to ratchet up capital investment requirements as the Care Quality Commission has quite rightly imposed ever-higher care quality standards…”