ERA Group conducted a survey to better assess the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on care homes and how to contain costs for the future
The Covid-19 crisis has caused unprecedented challenges for staff, residents, governing authorities and families. The residents, often living with cognitive impairments were hugely affected. They were not allowed to have physical contact with the outside world and were deprived of visits from family and friends. Residents were left confused and unable to understand the reasons why they did not have visitors anymore. It was a totally unexpected situation, with no planning and solutions being made up spontaneously.
Our survey was sent to more than 8,000 elderly care homes in Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Italy and the UK. The survey explores a wide range of issues and identifies that all care homes (large or small, local authority or privately funded) have incurred significant additional costs during the last months and will continue to do so.
They need to urgently find extra financial resources in the near future, without impacting the quality of services.
Download our white paper today which contains the complete results from our survey, highlighting some of the most challenging issues facing care homes and identifying where financial challenges are hitting hardest.
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"Management had to completely reorganise the day to day activities and the physical environment of the home. This incurred additional, uncontrolled, unbudgeted expenses in the struggle to provide extra staff cover and the protective equipment required."
3 Clear Areas of Concern
Regardless of the country, all the care homes responses expressed anxieties.
There are 3 clear areas of concern:
- Safety and well-being of staff, residents and families.
- Future Occupancy.
- Rising input costs.
The concern for the safety and well-being of staff and residents is of course a number one priority. The highlighted concerns also raise doubts for the future. Healthy occupancy rates are vital to care homes. There has been a significant drop in new entrants and of course mortality rates have been higher than normal. Unsurprisingly input costs have risen. Surges in demand have created national and local shortages. Temporary staffing and PPE scarcity have been widely reported, but there are knock-on effects across the supply chain as workforces are furloughed and many work from home.
Download our full white paper today which not only contains the complete survey results but also provides detailed analysis of the biggest areas of concerns.
An Example Survey Question and Results
