Over time, Central Bedfordshire have worked with Valuing Care on a number of care costs projects to provide them strategic oversight and transparency of costs in their care market.
In 2021 they again called on the company to work on 2 key projects:
- Cost of Care Review for Older People’s Residential and Nursing Care
- Learning Disability Placement Review using Valuing Care’s Purchaser Software
Cost of Care Review
Valuing Care conducting a cost review of care homes for older people within the Central Bedfordshire area. The Council were keen to separate out the additional cost resulting from the COVID pandemic. To facilitate this, Valuing Care requested two years of cost data from care home providers, with aim of calculating the financial impact on operating costs. Valuing Care helped in the consultation with providers and the survey received a good response rate.
The Council are now in receipt of the report ready for budget setting in 2021/22. In addition, the information provided will help the Council with the strategic overview needed to implement a successful Care Cap framework.
Learning Disabilities Spot Placement Review Using Valuing Care’s Purchaser Software
In 2017 the partnership conducted an in-area review of the current Learning Disability provision and found that the rates paid by the Council were broadly in line with their market costs. In 2021, the Council wanted to go further and create a sustainable framework for all their spot residential placements. Based on this, they asked Valuing Care to collect information from a list of targeted providers.
Rather than just collect the information in Excel, Central Bedfordshire asked Valuing Care to load all the cases onto the company’s Purchaser software so that they had a long lasting and maintainable record going forward.
Working in partnership with Valuing Care they are collecting:
- Underlying cost details of their targeted residential packages
- Staff rotas relating to each individual package
- Comparing this information to Valuing Care’s national and local models to provide a detailed breakdown of cost per package
- Storing all of this information into their own environment within the Purchaser software so all information can be captured once and reused over future years
- Using Valuing Care’s software and models to manage inflation requests from providers
The project will leave Central Bedfordshire with all cases recorded on a central system with detailed breakdown of their costs. Going forward the Council will be able to:
- Continuously compare current costs to Valuing Care’s model costs
- Uplift cases by inflation in a targeted manner ensure value for money and sustainability
- Review cases with the greatest variance, either by Provider, profitability or sustainability
If you are interested in knowing more about the project or Valuing Care’s Purchaser software please click the button below.
If you are interested in knowing more about the project or Valuing Care’s Purchaser software please contact here.