Social care

Innovation and Efficiency in Long-Term Care

This report identifies the factors which hinder care providers from carrying out strategic innovation to deliver personalised and cost effective care services. We also outline a number of options to overcome obstacles to innovation and to positively create a market environment which fosters innovative practice.

Key findings

This paper explains what we mean by ‘innovation’ and ‘efficiency’ in care and why they are so important in the current care market:

  • The ability to respond flexibly to more diverse user needs is crucial in the wake of
    a) an increased government focus on personalisation and choice, and
    b) growing numbers of self-funding older people and personal budget holders
  • The current care market is “resource constrained” – funding is limited and uncertain, meaning providers are increasingly having to “do more with less” to survive

Both require a degree of innovation and lateral thinking to create new services or new ways of working. Although innovation can be found in the current care market, we differentiate between this improvised ‘innovation by necessity’ and the more strategic innovation necessary for planned organisational development. Care supply remains patchy in quality and efficiency, with different providers progressing at different rates, exacerbating the postcode lottery many older people face when navigating the care system.

Further reading

Who cares?
The experience of social care workers, and the enforcement of employment rights in the sector
·
Nye Cominetti
To govern is to choose
The choices facing the Chancellor this autumn
·
Torsten Bell, Adam Corlett, Daniel Tomlinson
A caring tax rise?
The impacts of a potential increase in National Insurance
·
Torsten Bell, Adam Corlett