Issue - meetings

To Follow.

Report CS18153

The Committee considered a report providing an update on a block contract recently awarded to Mission Care for the provision of 70 nursing care beds for a period of seven years from 2^nd January 2018 to 1^st January 2025, with the option to extend the contract for a further three year period. 

The contract required Mission Care to ensure that all the homes included within the contract sustained a Care Quality Commission rating of ‘Good’ or above for the duration of the contact; however rating of the Greenhill and Elmwood Nursing Homes had been reassessed as ‘Requires Improvement’ during the procurement process.  The Local Authority continued to work closely with Mission Care to improve the quality of provision at these homes.  Officers were confident that Greenhill Nursing Home was now delivering a ‘Good’ provision and that Elmwood Nursing Home would shortly be achieving this standard, although the care homes would continue to be rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ until the Care Quality Commission undertook a further inspection.  The Local Authority was not currently making new placements at Elmwood Nursing Home but anticipated making future placements following the successful completion of the Improvement Protocol.  The Contact Compliance Team continued to make frequent inspections of Mission Care Homes due to the high number of Council-funded residents, including monthly visits to Elmwood Nursing Home where checks were made to ensure that the requirements of both the Care Quality Commission and the Local Authority’s Quality Assessment Framework were met.

In response to a question from the Vice-Chairman, the Head of Programme Delivery confirmed that there was sufficient capacity in the three homes assessed as offering ‘Good’ provision to meet current demand.  It had been permissible to backdate the start date of the contract to 2^nd January 2018 on this occasion as there were a number of existing clients already placed with Mission Care and by backdating the contract, an additional three months of cost savings had been realised as a result of the competitive price of the contract.

RESOLVED that the update on the Nursing Care Beds contract and ongoing arrangements for contract monitoring be noted.