Healthcare Leader - 17 May 2017

Continuing Healthcare (CHC) packages demand significant amounts from healthcare budgets. Care for patients with complex needs could cost thousands of pounds per week, for many years, so working out a better deal on the prices quoted could create much-needed, sustainable savings. Yet NHS re-organisation has left some areas of CHC to drift, creating an opportunity for providers to inflate their prices, particularly for specialist placements. Price squeezes from other purchasers, such as councils, means that providers are looking more and more towards the health sector as a major source of profit. Read the full article here

HTN - 23 November 2016

The cultural change of using technology to purchase CHC placements: are we ready? Ray Hart, director at Valuing Care, discusses the cultural change of using technology to improve the purchasing process for CHC placements. He discusses the benefits, and explains why training is essential to its success. In most industries, for people in the workforce whose roles have purchasing responsibilities, there are processes in place, and access to data, to help decision making. This information is largely technology-based and helps the purchaser get the best price whilst still ensuring sustainable supply. In Continuing Healthcare (CHC), this isn’t always the case. Nurses and assessors for instance, commonly purchase CHC packages over the telephone or via face-to-face meetings without any pricing information to back those transactions. They are responsible for purchasing thousands of pounds worth of care, and yet often this task is completed without challenge to the prices providers quote, and without question on the breakdown of those costs. Read the full article here

Building Better Healthcare - 22nd September 2016

Ray Hart, director at Valuing Care, explains why it is now time to step up CHC purchasing processes and ditch the burdensome methods that commissioners have battled with for years As the NHS keeps having to find efficiencies, while also trying to identify new and better ways of working, many processes within healthcare have been examined to see what improvements can be made and what steps are needed to get them into better shape. The cost of purchasing and managing Continuing Healthcare (CHC) placements is one of the few areas that has unfortunately been somewhat overlooked and overshadowed in favour of other procurement areas. And yet the purchasing process currently in place is long overdue an upgrade. Read the article here

The MJ - 28th November 2014

Many councils are yet to prepare and there are areas that must be given priority; key aspects that need to be administered to support implementation of the Care Act. The Act introduces new duties and obligations on local authorities in terms of those who pay for their own care, and as such there is a requirement to implement ambitious changes. Regardless of whether people are local authority funded or responsible for paying for their own care costs, good quality information and advice must be available to everyone to help them make the right choices. Already there are implications on local government and councils need to get started now as from April 2015 there are important changes to be met and achievements made. The tasks for councils now is to review existing advice and information services, and be in a position where they can provide good quality, comprehensive information for people on how to fund their own care , and support and direct them to independent financial advice
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