The Competition and Markets Authority has recently started a market study into the care homes for the elderly to see how well the market works, and to ensure people are being treated fairly.
Not long ago, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) began looking into whether care home providers are treating their residents and representatives in a fair manner. In this study, the CMA is encouraging any interested persons to come forward with any information to help them.
In the last few years, you may have seen care homes crop-up in the news and often scandalised when someone managed to sneak in a spy camera to capture a care home worker treating someone poorly. As many elderly people no longer have full control of all their physical and mental abilities, they are in a very vulnerable position, and care home workers can sadly take advantage of that. Workers obviously have an important duty to care and assist the elderly. Perhaps the CMA was incentivised by the viral videos or perhaps not.
One in five care homes failing
The BBC reported in February of 2015 that one in five care homes were failing in their standards of care. The Care Quality Commission are keen to up the standards as in 2014, around 1,829 care homes were found to be:
- Not safe enough
- Poorly managed
- Not caring enough
- Or not responding to the individual residents’ needs.
There were even cases of elderly residents being washed in cold water, and homes smelling of urine.
Care homes don’t seem to have the supervision and scrutiny at the same level as hospitals and schools. However, they house around 433,000 people and are worth around £15.9 million a year. Hopefully the CMA will be able to shed some light into just how well the quiet sector is doing. The main concerns the CMA will be looking into are more on the competition law side, such as:
- Whether the care homes are treating their residents fairly and complying with the law in the way they provide their care and services;
- Whether care homes are providing enough information to the elderly and their representatives so that they can make an informed decision in choosing or moving care homes;
- The local authorities’ roles and responsibilities when it comes to the elderly, and when it ends;
- Whether there is enough competition in the mark to make sure quality is kept high enough but prices are not unreasonable.
The CMA will generally look to whether the care home market, as it is, is “effective, efficient and sustainable” enough.
Currently, there seems to be an ‘auctioning’ system for care homes where the local authorities will auction off patients to care homes for the cheapest prices. This process may be aimed at driving down costs, but there are fears that doing this could drastically compromise the quality of care. With the vulnerable elderly having little or no voice, it’s difficult to know how they are being treated.
The CMA’s study is expected to be published this summer.