Occupancy rates


The three Cs needed to improve occupancy rates


Tony Thiru, chief executive of Fulcrum Care, offers his advice for care homes who are struggling to fill beds after the pandemic by setting out the importance of following ‘three Cs’: compliance, confidence and commercials


The ultimate aim for all good care homes is to provide the best possible quality of care to their residents, helping them live a full and enriched life through their later years. While this should always be the primary focus, all care homes have overheads, stakeholders and a need to generate a return for the owner’s investment, as well as to reinvest back into the home. This is where low occupancy rates


become a problem: if you do not have enough residents in your care home, you are going to struggle to make enough to keep paying your staff, maintain and enhance the general facilities in your care home, which is important if you want to improve your care home steadily year on year while making return for the investors. Unfortunately, during the pandemic,


low occupancy rates in care homes have become an ever-increasing problem, which can leave your home in an uncertain position. When my team of experts at Fulcrum and I work with our clients who are struggling to fill spaces in their care home, we recommend focusing on three Cs: compliance, confidence and commercials.


How the pandemic has undermined confidence in the care sector Occupancy rates are crucial for care home success – and across the sector they have fallen considerably during the pandemic. At the height of the first wave,


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the Care Quality Commission (CQC) estimated they fell by ten per cent.1 The regulator for England reports that


rates have since recovered slightly, but a recent survey found that two in five respondents said their occupancy levels had fallen below 80 per cent.2


This is not


sustainable. Sadly, some of the low occupancy


in care homes can be attributed to the Covid-related deaths that were a problem at the start of the pandemic. The Office for National Statistics stated in May that the pandemic had caused a 19.5 per cent increase in deaths in care homes throughout England and Wales.3 When the first wave of the pandemic hit


the UK, our screens were full of images that directly undermined public perception of care homes, with clips of residents in quarantine unable to see their families and body bags being carried out. Fortunately, however, the development


and rollout of the national vaccine programme, alongside the improved procedures for reducing the risk of coronavirus in care homes, such as regular testing and other infection prevention and control (IPC) measures, means that Covid deaths in care homes have fallen substantially.4


At the same time, visitors


have been welcomed back, with visits and outings now not just permitted, but actively encouraged. Yet despite this, occupancy rates


have not fully recovered. Therefore, it is not just the reality of what is happening in care homes that is impacting how the public is choosing to care for elderly relatives; perception and confidence can take longer to restore than mere facts. Images of elderly residents waving at grandchildren through glass and body bags have left many people still feeling that care homes are too dangerous and isolated to look after their loved ones. Even before Covid-19, we have seen


that local authorities prefer to place their clients in care homes that are rated better than others. For example, in England, homes rated by the CQC as Good or Outstanding may be preferred over homes rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate. Similarly, private fee payers also prefer higher compliance-rated care homes. Therefore, when there are a lot of empty beds, compliance inspection rating matters to attract new residents.


1. Compliance When people look to place their loved ones in a care home, one of their first


www.thecarehomeenvironment.com • December 2021


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