Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Independent Age, provided the following comment in response to today's Daily Mail article exploring the use of dynamic purchasing systems, allowing care homes to bid for residents:
“Do we really want to treat older people as a 'product' to be bought and sold this way? This is about choosing a home for someone at a vulnerable point in their life. Evidence suggests that competition between care homes tends to drive down price but doesn't improve quality. We worry that this sort of automated system will continue that trend. We are concerned that older people's individual care needs will lose out to price as the main reason for selecting a home. For example, a care home that is further away from the older people's relatives might win the tender simply because it is cheaper. There is also a real danger that council's will routinely expect relatives to pay the additional cost of a place in anything other than the cheapest home, whether or not that home is the best one for the older person concerned.”