NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 10th October 2002
MASSIVE INCREASE PREDICTED IN DEMAND FOR ELDERLY CARE
There is likely to be a massive increase in the demand for elderly care between about 2005 and the middle of the century, one of Britain’s leading experts told delegates at the annual conference of the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) in Ashford, Kent.
William Laing, of the Laing & Buisson health care consultancy, said the significant increase expected over the next thirty years in the number of over-65s and over-85s
should give the long-term care sector confidence that its services would continue to be needed for quite some time.
Mr Laing foresaw a major role for the traditional care home well into the 21st century. He also anticipated an expansion of alternatives such as assisted living accommodation. This, he suggested, would be a less risky investment because the facilities could more easily be converted for other uses if no longer required for elderly care.
For a landmark report issued earlier this year (Calculating a Fair Price for Care - A Toolkit for Residential and Nursing Care Costs), Mr Laing said his organisation had sought to work out what would be a reasonable as well as realistic fee for the placement of publicly funded residents in nursing homes.
The research, he reminded the conference, had produced an illustrative figure (based on national average costs) of £459 per person per week, which would require most local authorities to increase the fees they currently pay by a significant amount. He stressed, however, that fair prices would have to be worked out area by area to reflect local circumstances.
Mr Laing said the substantial loss of beds over recent years had started to have an impact on what councils were prepared to pay. The balance of power between the purchasers and providers of care was showing signs of shifting towards the latter. During 2001/02 fees paid by social services to nursing homes had risen by 6 per cent overall, although much of this had been swallowed up by homes’ rising costs.
Mr Laing expected market forces to result over the next two or three years in further significant increases in the fees paid by social services. But he doubted whether they were likely to find the extra £1 billion that would be needed for them to comply with a recent Competition Commission appeal tribunal ruling that care homes should not be paid less by councils for looking after publicly funded residents than it costs the councils themselves to run their own homes.
Mr Laing said the massive reduction in the capacity of the care home sector over recent years must have been frightening for the Government. In 2001, nearly 10,000 independent care home places had been lost.
He added: “We have seen the Government step in recently to relax the application of many of the new environmental care standards which could result in further home closures. In 2002, however, closures are continuing at about the same rate as before.”
END
For further information about the RNHA annual conference, please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, RNHA
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile
For further information about the research carried out by Laing & Buisson for the report Calculating a Fair Price for Care - A Toolkit for Residential and Nursing Care Costs (published by the Rowntree Foundation), please contact:
William Laing on 020 7833 9123
Note to editors:
The ruling of the Competition Commission tribunal relates to a case brought by BetterCare against North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust. The appeal tribunal, in overturning an earlier ruling by the Office of Fair Trading, concluded that public authorities could not subsidise their own care homes whilst paying less to providers in the independent sector.
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