Is private provision of care a national scandal? : Tue Feb 23, 2016 10:18 pm
Just looking at the financial statements of a few specialist care homes. The residents are normally funded by local authorities and / or the NHS. Three are run by charities and roughly they spend all their fee income on care and related administration. Indeed, they seem to top up care costs out of other income they have to raise. The other provider is a company run by what appears to be a husband and wife. Out of fee income of £11 million they appeared to trouser £1 million+ and the next year on fees of £12 m they appear to have taken out in the region on £3.4m! These are staggering returns all funded by the taxpayer. It has to be more efficient for these to be publicly run. Even more worrying is what happens when the owners retire - presumably then sell the company to somebody, who may be less ethical? As they have built up a residential property portfolio worth tens of millions of pounds could they just wind it up, chuck the residents out and sell the property? I don't know the answer to that. But, whatever the amount of profits extracted are very large compared with most comparable, non-publicly funded businesses. The world is mad.